What constitutes development? This question arose on a list serve I pay a lot of atention to. I’ve been working at this one a while. I think the market is most effective communication of value and the feedback loops of business failure or success that exists. And now that wants and needs […]

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 […]

What would the world really look like if hybrid forms of good capital became commonplace? What new ways of acting would arise? What if we could more clearly imagine the possibilities? This thought led me to imagine what xigi might look like in Second Life (SL), the leading 3D social network where nearly 10 million residents […]

I was an early adopter at Change.org Ben Ratray’s effort to aggregate donors around causes. It was pretty neat and then people would say come be my friend and see my causes, and I did that for a while. Then I stopped responding because there was no next step; no community was building that I […]

I’ve been taking at look at some of the social capital market exchanges that have been around for a while. Two that are up and running, Bovespa in Brazil and Sasix in South Africa, label projects by non profits “stocks” and report on their progress in the way that regulated for profit exchanges do; quarterly, […]

The new blended value asset class is midway between giving and investing. Citigroup is acknowledging that with a new pair of funds focused on microfinance. That shift, that ability to exist in two world, is a sign of the new investing zeitgeist.

Rather than wondering what your money is doing in your name, you have the confidence of knowing – by creating accountability for good, and accountability for financial performance This message and the picture are part of a new piece of marketing we’re working on at GoodCap. It’s one of two versions. Deb Parsons voted for the same […]

Here’s a phrase I’m using that seems to be resonating: “We’re creating market innovations to do the things the societal safety net used to do. Since the market swallowed the public square, that’s just the way it is..” I’ve thought about using guilt at that point; like “The market has a responsibility to do that.” […]

The MacArthur foundation, perhaps best known for the so-called genius grants it hands out each year, has given the Center on Public Diplomacy of the University of Southern California $550,000 to stage events in Second Life, including discussions of how foundations can address issues like migration and education, reports the NY Times. Lucy Bernholz finds […]