The Social Capital Index (SCI) tracks investments in the social capital market, including social enterprise, fair trade, digital inclusion, and selected clean tech and microfinance investments.
As the triple-bottom line approach to doing business gains traction, we've added more than $164 million worth of new social sector investments to the most recent edition of the Social Capital Index. $46.8 million of these investments were made in the month of May. The rest of the investments were made as far back as April 2007 and were reported to us as people learned that we are building out the index of social capital investments. This edition of the SCI showcases grants and investments made by the Omidyar Network in a digital copyright registry system, emerging market microfinance and rural development. Also highlighted is Adventure Capital Fund?s investment in BANG Edutainment, a youth development organization in the UK.
Lastly, we are glad to cover a pioneering financial engineering initiative that won the ?Sustainable Deal of the Year? award on June 3 2008: Morgan Stanley and Blue Orchard?s Loan for Development or BOLD 2. BOLD brings microfinance closer to international capital markets as a source of medium-term money in local currency at competitive rates. For a full listing of recent and historical deals in social enterprise, digital inclusion, fair trade, and selected microfinance and clean tech companies, please see the Social Capital Index.
Are you looking for an investment opportunity that provides both financial and social returns? Or are you an entrepreneur looking for funding for your business that delivers a return on investment but also leaves a lasting social impact? Either way, you have come to the right place. Last month we debuted a new feature of the Social Capital Index called Deals in Play. Deals in Play lists social enterprises that are actively looking for capital. Here we present the June edition, which showcases some innovative and very interesting business plans. From organic food importers and personal credit providers to national ATM payment networks, these entrepreneurs bring forward insightful ideas and cutting edge solutions. For a full listing of these budding social enterprises, please click here. If you are an entrepreneur in need for financing and would like to be listed, please write to us at socapindex@goodcap.net and we will speak with you regarding our requirements.
Below is the SCI asset class fan, which shows a spectrum of the asset classes included in the SCI, from equity to debt and including grants. Eventually we will categorize the entire Index using this fan. The full fan is available here. Also available is the fund matrix, where various social funds are described in more detail. Like all the rest of the resources in the SCI, it is a work in progress, and will become fuller and more complete over time.
Yesterday in a post on the UNDP's growing inclusive markets initiative, I mentioned a debate taking place on Creative Capitalism. Here's what the debate is all about: Creative Capitalism: A Conversation is a web experiment designed to produce a book -- a collection of essays and commentary on capitalism, philanthropy and global development -- to be edited by us and published by Simon and Schuster in the fall of 2008. The book takes as its starting point a speech Bill Gates delivered this January at the World Economic Forum in Davos. In it, he said that many of the world's problems are too big for philanthropy--even on the scale of the Gates Foundation. And he said that the free-market capitalist system itself would have to solve them. It sounds like an interesting experiment (although the fall 2008 date for a book sounds a bit, eh hem, ambitious). So far, they've...
Kazakhstan: Nazarbayev celebrates ?Starry Decade of Astana,? politely declines to rename city in his honor. A Difficult Road: India faces a struggle to upgrade its roads, railways, and ports. Emerging Markets: Not the haven investors hoped they?d be. Hot Money: Who isn?t putting their money into China? Private Equity: It?s taking off in Africa.
Collins Mbalo, resident blogger at A Nairobian's Perspective, complains about the lack of access to PayPal services in Kenya and Africa generally. While anyone can set up a PayPal account, Africans have no way to transfer this money into a bank account. PayPal has a list of the services it provides in countries around the world here. It looks like there's not a single country in Africa under the "Send. Receive. Withdraw" heading. At best, residents in Africa only have access to the 'send' function. Africans don't even have access to a functionality that allows users in some countries to withdraw funds to a debit card. I'm not sure why this is the case, but at least in South Africa it looks like the tax authorities are afraid they're going to miss out on tax revenues. You can read more speculations about why this is the case on the blog...
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) just launched its growing inclusive markets initiative, part of its work to help achieve the Millennium Development Goals (Hat tip: NextBillion.net). I have to say that this is a welcome, although perhaps overdue, development. The UNDP has released a report called Creating Value for All along with a series of case studies and (although not yet up on their website) heat maps that provide data on basic infrastructure and services among the poor. (One of the heat maps from the report is pictured below. It shows the share of poor households in South Africa with access to a cell phone.)
An increasing number of commentators have pointed worryingly at growing inflation in many emerging markets. Inflation is around 8 percent in China and 11 percent in India. Part of the problem is the rising cost of energy resources, but that's not the whole story since inflation is afflicting both net energy importers and exporters. Russia, for example, is facing an inflation rate of around 15 percent. According to an article today in the Financial Times: A weighted average of consumer price inflation in the 20 largest emerging markets rose from 4.5 per cent in March 2007 to 6.9 per cent in March 2008... What can be done about this worrying trend? Anders Aslund, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, proposes a simple solution for the transition economies: let their currencies float.
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