A report by Credit Suisse and the Schwab Foun­da­tion for Social Entre­pre­neur­ship was released this week on the topic of impact invest­ing at the World Eco­nomic Forum’s annual meet­ing (Davos). A great overview of the cur­rent land­scape, it is worth a read, par­tic­u­larly Mark Kramer’s and Sir Richard Bran­son’s inter­views and com­ments on the sector.

Investing_for_impact Credit Suisse — Schwab Report

The report lead me down an inter­est­ing thought path on the “next steps” of the sector…

Evi­dence:  The report high­lights sev­eral suc­cess­ful social enter­prise mod­els that are part of Schwab’s net­work. My per­sonal favourite was Bam Aquino of Hapinoy in the Philip­pines — invest­ment funds that cre­ates sus­tain­able dis­tri­b­u­tion chan­nels and busi­ness devel­op­ment strate­gies to empower for­merly iso­lated and infor­mal sec­tors of the Fil­ipino econ­omy. The report above, com­ple­ments the Data Dri­ven JP Morgan-GIIN report, that drills drown into the num­bers and break­down of social enter­prise in dif­fer­ent sectors.

As a next step, I would love to see a report that focusses more on the acces­si­bil­ity and avail­abil­ity of invest­ments in the space — from an investors per­spec­tive. Com­ing from an asset-management back­ground, I have devel­oped a strong belief that under­stand­ing the invest­ment is just as impor­tant as know­ing your invest­ment options. Cur­rently, main-stream investor’s expo­sure of ‘social’ in invest­ments are SRI offer­ings — they need to be edu­cated on dif­fer­ent entry points and impact invest­ing prod­uct offer­ings rang­ing from an insti­tu­tional and pri­vate client per­spec­tive. A great start­ing point to this step is Impact Asset’s 50: A list­ing of Impact Fund Man­agers.

Fail­ure: With the indus­try in a growth stage, as great as it is to know the suc­cesses and the land­scape, it is just as impor­tant to know the fail­ures. Where did we go wrong? What worked? How did you man­age to pivot? How do you pri­or­i­tize your mis­sion and your finances? When did you know the time to scale? There is such a stigma with fail­ure in the non-profit/charity world. This stigma should NOT be car­ried for­ward into the impact investing/social enter­prise sec­tor. Fail­ure is a gift — and the abil­ity to speak freely to learn from them, should be embraced by this sec­tor. A won­der­ful exam­ple of embrac­ing fail­ure is the EWB Canada’s Fail­ure Reports. I would love to see a sim­i­lar ini­tia­tive in the impact invest­ing sec­tor. Even inter­nally within orga­ni­za­tions — as a start.

Road-Map: There is a wealth of infor­ma­tion on impact invest­ing that has been churned up within the last few years or so. The issue is know­ing where to look: from fund­ing social enter­prises to exit­ing an invest­ment. A nat­ural next step to this would be for var­i­ous stake­hold­ers to share their “how-tos” and points of con­sid­er­a­tion in the impact sec­tor. Some orga­ni­za­tions have already begun to pave the way for this, but what we need is for more road-maps to appear so at the very least, when you’re at the start­ing line — you have a gen­eral sense of direc­tion on where to go.

 

*The post below was orig­i­nally pub­lished on Lev­oLeague on Dec 5th, 2011

Note: I had the plea­sure of co-organizing the event I wrote up below, and it turned out to be one of the most inspir­ing nights in my young pro­fes­sional career. Many thanks to the team at YWiB as well as all the atten­dees for being so hon­est and open. 

***

“Sto­ries set the inner life into motion, and this is par­tic­u­larly impor­tant where the inner life is fright­ened, wedged, or cor­nered. Story greases the hoists and pul­leys, it causes adren­a­line to surge, shows us the way out, down, or up, and for our trou­ble, cuts for us fine wide doors in pre­vi­ously blank walls, open­ings that lead to the dream­land, that lead to love and learn­ing, that lead us back to our own real lives as know­ing wild­ish women.”

—Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Sto­ries are how peo­ple make sense of their worlds. As a child, we spon­ta­neously play out sto­ries on who we hope to become and how peo­ple relate to one another. As teenagers, we con­tin­u­ously explore our own sto­ries and oth­ers in order to under­stand our ever-expanding world. As adults, the sto­ries that we tell and fall in love with are the ones we value most in this world. In a very real sense, sto­ries are a win­dow into how we per­ceive the world around us and ulti­mately, influ­ences our humanity.

It is through the power of sto­ries that Young Women in Busi­ness (YWiB) brought together 20 influ­en­tial women lead­ers and 20 upcom­ing young women for an evening of shared val­ues, fears and hopes in Van­cou­ver, Canada this past weekend.

The 40 women came from a myr­iad of back­grounds: high pro­file Cana­dian politi­cians. Moth­ers. Part­ners of legal and finan­cial firms. Trail-blazers. Suc­cess­ful social entre­pre­neurs. Aspir­ing young pro­fes­sion­als. And above all, life­long learn­ers. The vision for the evening was to con­nect those who have paved the oppor­tu­ni­ties fac­ing young women today, with those who have the eager­ness to make a dif­fer­ence in their communities.

Ques­tions posed to the both gen­er­a­tional ends of the con­ver­sa­tion included:

• What has been one of your most vul­ner­a­ble moments?
• What do you not like being stereo­typed as?
• In one sen­tence, what would you wish most for your future self?
• What do you look for in a busi­ness part­ner? how about a per­sonal relationship?
• What are com­po­nents of a healthy rela­tion­ship? (busi­ness, men­tor­ship, roman­tic relationship)
• What will be dif­fer­ent in your life in exactly 1 year?

As the night started, each women shared gen­uinely her story and how she got to where she is. Sev­eral key trends and themes emerged:

1) On work and lead­ing a bal­anced life

“Our (older) gen­er­a­tion over­did it. We over­com­pen­sated for our weak­nesses and gen­der when we should have been own­ing it. We pounded away and sac­ri­ficed too many things. Please be smart on how you work.”

“Work with peo­ple who have a value base.”

“Your why is more impor­tant than your fear. Women have to think big­ger and take more risks.”

2) On health

“Watch­ing some­one die is one of the best and worst things in life. It puts every­thing into per­spec­tive. Being alive and healthy is a priv­i­lege. Cher­ish it while you can.”

“ Do not ever ever give up on a bal­anced life.”

3) On inter-generational shar­ing and mentoring

“My whole life has been spent being spot­ted and men­tored by other intel­li­gent men and
women. It’s not being a man or a woman, it’s about being pre­sentable, intel­li­gent and know­ing what you’re talk­ing about.”

“Deci­sions that are com­ple­mented by men AND women are bet­ter. Include men in con­ver­sa­tions and remem­ber to make sure your that voice is heard.”

As atten­dees left for the night, each walked out a lit­tle more coura­geous, a lit­tle more hum­bled and a lit­tle more inspired by the sto­ries that were shared over last the pre­vi­ous two hours. The salon was par­tic­u­larly a beau­ti­ful reminder on the strength of inter-generational rela­tion­ships. When we start shar­ing from a place that is vul­ner­a­ble, we start to see each generation’s defin­ing moments — mak­ing us lis­ten closely to peo­ple around us and more impor­tantly, to ourselves.

Just dis­cov­ered an incred­i­ble pho­tog­ra­pher and his web­site: 365q.ca. Thought I would share a cou­ple of my favourite pic­tures I find inspir­ing. Enjoy!

*The post below was orig­i­nally pub­lished on http://www.socialearth.org on Nov 25, 2011

In the social enter­prise world, one key issue that con­stantly resur­faces, as it would in any grow­ing sec­tor, is one of fund­ing and iden­ti­fy­ing a proper invest­ment pipeline. The acces­si­bil­ity and  avail­abil­ity of start-up fund­ing is cru­cial to star­tups, and in the case of social enter­prises, a largely untapped mar­ket. Here’s whereInvest2Innovate (i2i) comes into the pic­ture. They are a social enter­prise inter­me­di­ary that sup­ports the growth of social entre­pre­neur­ship in new mar­kets, help­ing fun­ders and early stage entre­pre­neurs see eye to eye.

I had the oppor­tu­nity to con­nect with Kalsoom Lakhani the founder and CEO of i2i to inter­view her about her recently launched social enter­prise. A trail­blazer and native to Pak­istan, Lakhani launched i2i’s pilot in Pak­istan in Sep­tem­ber 2011 with plans to expand oper­a­tions to other coun­tries post 2012. Here’s what she has to say about her startup and the space:

1) What is most inter­est­ing to you right now in the social enter­prise space? 
There are many inter­est­ing inno­va­tions tak­ing place right now – from ground­break­ing SMS crowd-mapping tools to agriculture-based inno­va­tions for small farm­ers. Inno­v­a­tive tools & approaches of engag­ing and empow­er­ing low-income com­mu­ni­ties are com­ing up con­stantly. But I’m also extremely inter­ested in the growth of the impact invest­ment space, and where we are right now in terms of the com­mu­nity as an emerg­ing asset class, whether or not this type of invest­ment breeds bet­ter social impact met­rics, and whether the cap­i­tal is flow­ing to the right places. There are still a lot of spaces we need to fill when it comes to con­nect­ing cap­i­tal to social enter­prises, par­tic­u­larly at the early-stage, and it’s inter­est­ing to see how crowd-funding and other inno­v­a­tive ways of rais­ing cap­i­tal are becom­ing poten­tial solu­tions to help fill that gap.

2) Why start up i2i? Why is this the time to enter into the mar­ket? 
i2i was launched in order to help address some of the dis­con­nects in the social entre­pre­neur­ship space. Prior to launch­ing the com­pany, I worked in ven­ture phil­an­thropy for over three years, pro­vid­ing seed fund­ing and sup­port to early-stage social enter­prises mainly in Pak­istan. I was first exposed to the “space” then, and quickly immersed myself in all things social entre­pre­neur­ship & inno­va­tion. It has been fas­ci­nat­ing and moti­vat­ing to see grow­ing ecosys­tems in mar­kets like India, Latin Amer­ica (Mex­ico, Brazil, Chile are good exam­ples), and East Africa. Beyond higher access to cap­i­tal (a lot of impact investors oper­ate in these coun­tries), we’ve seen the growth of other play­ers that fur­ther sup­port social enter­prise – incu­ba­tors, accel­er­a­tors, gov­ern­ment poli­cies (in some cases), inter­me­di­aries, etc.

i2i was founded to take a sim­i­lar ecosys­tem approach in the “untapped” mar­kets – that’s a lot of jar­gon I know, but essen­tially we pro­vide tai­lored ser­vices to early-stage social enter­prises to grow their busi­nesses and con­nect them to cap­i­tal. Pak­istan, our pilot mar­ket, is a great exam­ple of a coun­try where there is a sig­nif­i­cant need for more inno­v­a­tive and market-based approaches to devel­op­ment – 66% of the pop­u­la­tion live on under $2 a day – but where the envi­ron­ment for social entre­pre­neur­ship is rel­a­tively new. Entre­pre­neurs often lack the tools & ser­vices to max­i­mize the poten­tial of their mod­els and attract cap­i­tal, espe­cially in mar­kets like Pak­istan, where the volatile polit­i­cal and secu­rity sit­u­a­tion hurt the investor envi­ron­ment. There is a lot oppor­tu­nity for i2i, as an inter­me­di­ary, along with other part­ner orga­ni­za­tions, to be the archi­tects of the ecosys­tem, fos­ter­ing the social entre­pre­neur­ship space both from the top-down and the bottom-up.

3) What is the biggest mis­con­cep­tion you see in the world of social enter­prise and where do you stand on the issue? 
I think the biggest mis­con­cep­tion in social enter­prise is that it’s ok to stop at the “warm & fuzzy” and throw the term around irre­spon­si­bly. It dri­ves me crazy. Social enter­prise ulti­mately com­bines the best of the busi­ness and the char­ity world – it begs the ques­tion, “Could we mag­nify social impact if we take a busi­ness approach to devel­op­ment?” Social entre­pre­neur­ship is not the solu­tion to every­thing, but in some cases, it can be really effec­tive. For instance, if rural low-income com­mu­ni­ties that are off the elec­tric­ity grid use kerosene as their light and heat source, not only is it a costly prod­uct, but it poses ter­ri­ble health and envi­ron­men­tal ram­i­fi­ca­tions. Dis­plac­ing this demand for kerosene with clean energy solu­tions pro­vides these low-income com­mu­ni­ties with bet­ter alter­na­tives at com­pa­ra­ble prices, ulti­mately con­tribut­ing to poverty alle­vi­a­tion. Social enter­prises need to demon­strate social and/or envi­ron­men­tal impact – that is what tends to qual­ify the “social” in the equa­tion, but at the end of the day, they are busi­nesses that need to have strong mod­els and be sus­tain­able in the long-term. Some­times that gets lost in the “warm & fuzzy” sto­ries we hear in the space, which are great in com­mu­ni­cat­ing an organization’s vision and build­ing a com­mu­nity of sup­port­ers, but there needs to be sub­stance behind that story.

4) What is one action would like peo­ple to take once they know if i2i? 
If you are a social enter­prise, espe­cially in Pak­istan (since that is our pilot), get in touch with us to get an assess­ment of your busi­ness and how i2i can pro­vide ser­vices (from busi­ness devel­op­ment to communications/marketing) to help your orga­ni­za­tion grow. If you are a poten­tial investor (both for i2i and/or inter­ested in early-stage enter­prises in new mar­kets), we’d love to talk to you! And finally, if you are just a sup­porter, we are always excited to hear your feed­back and make our model better.