Social Capital Markets in the Mainstream
Monday, June 9th, 2008This week’s Newseek has an article entitled “A Stock Exchange for Do-Gooders” about one of the pioneering forays into a social stock exchange. BVS&A, the self-proclaimed “Social and Environmental Stock Exchange” launched in Brazil way back in 2003 with the full support of Bovespa, the actual Brazilian stock exchange.
We are always happy to see positive publicity for social capital markets, especially in such mainstream a venue as Newsweek. BVS&A strongly advocates for corporate donations and has the explicit support of the world’s largest CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) organization, the United Nations Global Compact.
BVS&A reports nearly $6 million in contributions to date. While they differ from socialmarkets in execution, BVS&A’s founding principles have many similarities to ours - some strikingly so, as highlighted by its founder Celso Grecco in the Newseek article:
- the marketplace needs to “make informed decisions about which projects to fund”
- investments in philanthropic enterprises yield profits in the form of “social dividends“
- BVS&A offers features that “intelligent investors crave: order and transparency“
- BVS&A is a “pioneer in the field called ‘social marketing‘” (our personal fave)
