socially marketing

We were really looking forward to the SoCap08 conference (see previous post) so we were thoroughly thrilled to be asked by the SoCap folks to not just attend, but to present socialmarkets there!

That event is still a few weeks away, but our conference cup runneth over: we will also be presenting socialmarkets (more specifically the ideas behind it) at a conference called “Interesting New York“, next Saturday right here in NYC.

Interesting New York is just one in a group of “commercial and greed-free” globally dispersed conferences organized by The Open Intelligence Agency (OIA).  These conferences all share one simple premise: a forum for presenting ideas which are, well… interesting.

Here’s how it works: you submit a brief overview of your (allegedly) interesting idea, and if the folks at OIA find it of sufficient interest, you’re in.  Allan heard about the conference and made the submission… and happily, socialmarkets passed interesting muster - we’re in!

There are absolutely no subject constraints for candidates, so conference offerings cover an almost comically broad range of topics.  A few samplings from earlier conferences hit on the art of storytelling, why some people are better swimmers than others, and the myths vs. realities of quicksand.  I’m confident socialmarkets will fit quite neatly in there somewhere.

So… two opportunities to see socialmarkets strut its stuff live: next week in New York, and next month in San Francisco.  Of course, we will be posting links to both talks on our site as soon as possible, so even if not in real-time, we hope you’ll join us…

Among the many social networks that have sprung up on the web, xigi.net is one of our faves.  Xigi’s target audience is social capitalists, and its mission is to strengthen the connections (especially investments) between the capital market and social service sectors… or as xigi puts it:  “to increase the flow of capital to good.”

Xigi is taking its mission to the next level by coordinating the first-ever Social Capital Markets Conference (SoCap08) in San Francisco later this year.  SoCap08 explains itself like this:

“‘Doing well by doing good’ is becoming the mantra of a new generation of social entrepreneurs and investors. (SoCap08) will bring together these catalytic changemakers - the entrepreneurs who want to change the world and the capital that wants to make it happen.”

I’m excited about this conference, for many reasons.  For starters, it will be great to talk face-to-face with others working in social capital, both to see what they’re up to and to spread the socialmarkets gospel.

On a deeper level, I’m excited about what this conference means for the social capital market space as a whole.  It’s further confirmation of the momentum behind new models of both capitalism and philanthropy - and for what is possible at their intersection.

The idea of directing even a marginally larger slice of the market’s vast resources into the social sector is a mighty powerful one.   I’d love to not just see it happen - I’d love to help make it happen.

I have no doubt ‘08 is just the beginning of a long run of SoCaps.  We will be there to see for ourselves, and it would be great to see you there if you will too.  If not, you can at least follow the action from the SoCap08 site or any of its live (and semi-live) coverage - perhaps even from right here at the socialmarkets blog!

Society takes its time to absorb new ideas - even really good ones.  A closer look at your typical “overnight sensation” will almost always reveal the slow, methodical build-up behind the meteoric rise.

SROI (Social Return On Investment) is still a relatively new idea, but I think it’s finally starting to work its way up the general acceptance curve.  Here at socialmarkets.org, we see it all the time - talking amongst ourselves and the other early adopters in the SROI sandbox.

It is noteworthy (and gratifying) to hear SROI mentioned outside that sandbox.  A recent article at Slate.com did exactly that, in a piece  entirely devoted to SROI and the challenges behind its calculation.  The specific issue at hand was not entirely obvious, but valid nonetheless: the costs and benefits of increased access for the disabled at miniature golf courses.

Apparently, the Department of Justice has released a report on new regulations for greater disabled access to many public venues, including miniature golf courses.  The government includes not just the estimated cost of those regulations in their report ($23 billion) but also the estimated public benefit ($54 billion.)  Seems like a good deal at first blush - but to Slate’s credit, they ask this critical question:

“How do you calculate the benefits of getting around a miniature golf course?”

I think they do an excellent job in addressing that question - you can click here and decide for yourself.  They talk about the many factors to be measured (e.g. value to the disabled, energy savings, time horizon) as well as the challenges in taking those measurements (e.g. questionable assumptions, survey unreliability) and end with this rather sobering statistic:

“Depending on the assumptions the analysts use, they find that there is a possibility the net gains from the regulations could be as high as $40 billion or as low as $4.7 billion…”

One of our goals at socialmarkets.org is to narrow such alarmingly wide ranges of expected social benefit by advancing the science of SROI.  In the meanwhile, we’re happy just to see the government demonstrating the constructive use of SROI, and the mainstream media reporting on it.

This 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)

The social capital driving socialmarkets and similar agencies is only as real as you make it. It is not hard to sell the idea of value in educating our youth, housing our homeless or cleaning up our environment, but it is not easy to translate that value into concrete terms.

The concepts and even the vocabulary we use to describe social capital is largely borrowed from “real” capital markets, which makes the translation easier. This suggests an accounting system that mirrors, but is separate from the ledgers that define the bottom line at all but the most avant-garde organizations.

I don’t know if we will ever see (or even need to see) this separation disappear entirely, but I do know that less of it is more better - and that the winds of change are blowing in that direction. Carla Dearing (disclosure note: she is CEO of our fiscal sponsor GivingNet) talks about this on PhilanthroMedia.org, which in turn references this recent Fortune article on how the carbon trading market is helping farmers literally turn manure into money.

Carbon trading is perhaps my favourite example of the ‘new accounting’, where the scope of the bottom line is growing. Not long ago it would have been downright silly to include greenhouse gas emissions in your business plan, let alone on your balance sheet. Now, an increasingly viable carbon trading market has turned silly into savvy, and is drawing in participants from the public, private and nonprofit sectors.

This leap from social to “real” capital is just the tip of the iceberg, and arguably an arbitrary tip at that. Increasing alarm about global warming combined with an increasingly desperate search for new energy sources and myriad other factors to make carbon trading a reality.

But every social ill and issue has its own unique DNA, and is potentially just waiting for the perfect storm of political, social and economic trends to take them off the back burner. I can’t wait to see what market response is induced from a perceived crisis of illiteracy, homelessness or similarly sticky social problem.