In the current market downturn, individuals seeking to squeeze the most impact from their shrinking philanthropic assets have an important new alternative to explore in Calvert Giving Fund’s “Global Impact Ventures” platform, offered by Calvert Social Investment Foundation (Calvert Foundation). With the launch of this unique platform, Calvert Foundation is making available […]

A very interesting POV article came out in the Christian Science Monitor this weekend. It essentially lays out what seems to be evidence of what some of us have been calling SRI 3.0…a wave of enthusiasm and advocacy (or is it evangelism) around returns and value.

SRI 1.0; let’s call that the 70’s through sometime […]

“Contrary to management theories developed in the Industrial Age, employee satisfaction is an important ingredient for financial success, according to a new research paper by Wharton finance professor Alex Edmans. His findings also challenge the importance of short-term financial results and may have implications for investors interested in targeting socially responsible companies.” Here is the […]

San Jose, Calif. , October 24, 2007 – MicroPlace, a wholly-owned subsidiary of eBay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY), today announced the launch of a new website (www.microplace.com) that provides an easy way for everyday people to invest in the world’s working poor by leveraging the power of microfinance, a proven solution to alleviate global poverty.

With the […]

One of my favorite social enterprises is featured on MSNBC in a pretty good 5 minute video documentary. Evergreen is a seriously successful business built around a social social model for at-risk low income kids in poor areas of the SF Bay Area…they get taken out of the gang and drug ridden environments and given […]

Imagine reading this at a social purpose venture fund’s home page concentrating on, say, educational reform, committed to blended value and thinking out of the box on risk/return as it relates to attaining goals:

“We are a global commitment aimed at investing and supporting sustainable enterprises that will drive educational reform, enable new delivery models, and […]

I finally got around to digging this up and listening to it (it’s a podcast). It’s Jed Emerson speaking about the general blended value proposition and its relationship to foundation asset management. It is extremely concise, devoid of expletives - for as those of us who know Jed, he has a certain way with words […]

I’m sitting in the basement ballroom of the Longbeach Hyatt at the 8th SEA Gathering with 600+ social enterprisers, mostly north america, but also europe, and a few other places. He’s talking about his book on blind people, Seeing Beyond Sight, a passion project of his 15 years in the making. Powerfully he teed it […]

Mac Margolis with Silvia Spring in London, Joe Cochrane in Jakarta and Melinda Liu in Beijing just released a Newsweek article that is pretty critical of the MFI exhuberence that I think it is safe to say we are in. “Fighting poverty has a long and divisive history, but nothing’s shaken up the pundits, wonks and […]

Social Edge is launching a discussion hosted by myself, Jed Emerson and Jim Fruchterman on risk-taking expansion capital for social enterprise. We hope that there can be some cross-posting in the coming days. Here is the discussion.

The gist of it is captured in the following: Over recent years many entrepreneurs have responded to the siren […]