Back in 2001 Kevin Jones and I set out to understand the social capital market. Actually the market that blends profit making with social purpose goes by many names – double bottom line, triple bottom line, blended value, etc. We believed then the best way to clarify the confusing landscape was by mapping it. In doing so we discovered many gaps in the ecosystem, a lack of standards and even little common terminology, etc. But something else became clear too- there are many passionate entrepreneurs hard at work building companies that make money and do good, and that there are a growing number of risk-taking investors willing to put their money where their heart was. Clean technology was furthest along as an asset class representing 2.27% of all venture
capital in 2001. In 2005 this had nearly doubled to 4.23%. We very nearly started an investor event company for clean tech at that time but decided we wanted to do something more wide-ranging that included poverty alleviation and other sectors. I am very happy to announce that last week we launched xigi.net (pronounced “ziggy” as in zeitgeist), a market discovery platform for social enterprise that includes clean tech, microfinance, community development, green building, education, fair trade, health, education and independent media among others. Judging by recent high profile articles in major magazines and newspapers, our timing couldn’t be better.
The current January 29, 2007 cover of Business Week is an article entitled: “Beyond The Green Corporation” on blending the business and social worlds in a two-way sustainable system. Today’s LA Times West Magazine Section profiles E-Bay founders Pierre Omidyar and Jeff Skoll who blended non-profit and for-profit models to build tide-changing investment structures for social investment. (Incidentally Google’s founders did the same). At the same time, last week the LA Times pointed to one of the foundation worlds untidy little secrets, that some of their investments (oil drilling, environmentally unfriendly chemicals, etc. are often at cross-purposes to their own philanthropic efforts.
A change in thinking at the Gates or Ford Foundations will cause a tsunami. Imagine they say, 1) we will not invest our core assets where it creates a substantial offset to our programmatic purpose, and 2) we will dedicate a steadily rising percentage of our assets into program related investments. This would trigger a rush of followers and a whole lot of money into the social enterprise market.
If the social enterprise market catches fire, our world is set to experience a very big change for the better.
