Climate Change

If you haven’t heard, we’ve officially passed 400ppm of carbon in the atmosphere. The good news? The SOCAP Community is on it, and unsurprisingly this week we saw two new session ideas tackling this. One from Jessica Margolin asking What Now? that will discuss what leadership looks like in a VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Chaotic, Ambiguous) environment. The Carbon War Room would like to host a session reminding us not to get caught up in the doom and gloom, but instead focus on the tangible, high impact opportunities to make a difference. They’ve proposed mapping the technology and capital streams to help us tap a still untapped, abundant resource: energy efficiency in building.

The Path to Impact

Quite a few sessions are diving deep on specific trends and uncovering the best path to impact for social enterprise.

Continuing on the ever important theme of actually learning from failure, Israel Kloss suggests diving in and looking at why major, crowdsourced buying and funding platforms like Kickstarter and Groupon have thrived, while non-profit platforms of a similar nature focused on taking action have failed. It looks to be a provocative exploration uncovering lessons for all of us moving forward.

Christine Duong Mason wants to talk about the power of games and take us through some of the latest developments in games being used both for social good and health.

Building on years of work in the state department, Steven Koltai is looking to share how entrepreneurship is the path of world peace.

 And Steve Schwartz is asking us to take a hard look at Mission Impossible (funding for early-stage, high risk ventures in the space) and wants to present concrete frameworks for developing early stage social ventures.

Interactive Workshops

Personally, I’m always happy to see opportunities to interact and dive in with our fellow participants. One intriguing workshop that is already generating some good discussion is looking to map the social enterprise support system. Another wants to harness our collective potential to consider some hard questions around ethics and sustainability in the global travel industry and develop recommendations to be published in the travel industry’s leading magazines.

We invite you to tell us what you think about these ideas right on SOCAP Open. And if the session you want to see in September hasn’t been proposed, jump right in! You have until June 17th to submit.

ShareTable.org is a philanthropic platform created for this event, but if enough money is raised to feed 50,000 people, the organizers will expand the endeavor into an ongoing accelerator helping restaurants to benefit their communities.

On Friday May 31st, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art will host an exhibit called “The Making of a Charitable Restaurant Movement,” in which some of the best local restaurants will team up to benefit the San Francisco and Marin Food Bank. The idea is to demonstrate a robust public interest in making food more meaningful by giving back.

More than forty of the city’s most respected restaurants will sell $50 gift certificates, of which $5 will fund meals for people in need; gift certificates will be available for purchase May 31 from 10am to 6pm at the museum and online.

For every dollar raised by this event, The Food Bank will be able to provide three meals for hungry people in the Bay Area—and the need has been rising in the last few years.

Congratulations to them and we hope to see you out there!

With that, the SOCAP team is excited to announce our 5 core themes for SOCAP13:

- Impact Investing
- Meaning
- Health
- Oceans
- Place-Based Innovation

In addition to our 5 core themes, we’ll offer focused exploration on the role of art and faith in ways that we’ve never done in the past. And inevitably, our themes will be threaded with trends and innovations in technology, media and design.

Stay tuned for in-depth information on this year’s themes; in the meantime, if you or someone you know are innovating in these core areas, please submit a session idea via SOCAP Open (June 17th deadline).

We’ll present a panel of tried and true social entrepreneurs to speak about connecting ideas to create and deliver tangible positive impact in society and community. SOCAP Co-Founder, Kevin Jones, will moderate the panel and lead the discussion about how we can continue creating bridges that will connect ideas to action and intersections between money and meaning.

Learn more & Register today! Special SOCAP discounted price is available.

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Converting fish waste into food. Powering fish farms in the desert. Generating value from oceans of data.

I caught up with Monica Jain recently to learn what business opportunities are emerging from the Fish 2.0 contest she has organized to connect investors with opportunities in the $390 billion seafood industry. (See “Fish 2.0: Investing in Sustainable Oceans and Fisheries.”)

From a surprisingly strong field of entries, Fish 2.0 will present the best businesses to investors this fall. The 65 remaining companies have been paired with advisers to further develop their business plans and will be winnowed to 10 winners and 10 runners-up by November. The top winners will split $75,000, but more important is the prospect of loans and equity investments from the impact investors Jain is lining up to review the deals.

Jain is already identifying market niches in which small and medium-sized businesses are marrying sustainability strategies to business necessities. Jain shared her early insights with Impact IQ, which is developing special coverage of sustainable oceans and fisheries in partnership with SOCAP 13, the social capital markets conference in San Francisco in September.

David Bank, Impact IQ: What excites you most about the Fish 2.0 contest entries?

Monica Jain, Fish 2.0: The breadth and strength of the businesses. Many of the businesses entering the sustainable seafood sector have a history of operations and are cash flow positive.

Impact IQ: What do you mean by ‘sustainable seafood’?

Fish 2.0: For example, large amounts of fish are discarded during fish processing and packaging. Fish heads, bones, and meat – an estimated 40 percent of the fish is wasted during filleting or processing fish. We’re seeing new technologies that allow for collection, storage, conversion, and sales of these otherwise wasted protein sources into marketable products.

These waste clippings and meat remnants contain valuable and unique proteins and nutrients. The new end-products include aquaculture feeds, fish meals and fish oil, pet foods, and fertilizers for agriculture.

Impact IQ: Is that new? Aren’t companies already reducing discards?

Fish 2.0: Yes. Several large aquaculture companies use the excess fish clippings to produce fish feeds or oils for large-scale operations. Now, we are seeing new, smaller companies in other areas of the marketplace, offering collection services for smaller scale processors and sales to local farmers and producers.

Impact IQ: How big is this opportunity?

Fish 2.0: The aquaculture market is worth about $120 billion per year. That’s at the farm level, where producers grow 60 million tons of seafood,or about 41 percent of the world’s seafood. Global demand for protein is only growing. An additional 23 million tons of seafood per year will be needed worldwide by 2030. (Editor’s note: See Jain’s white paper, “Financing Aquaculture: Investment Opportunities in Farmed Seafood”)

Producers are looking for substitutes for the fish oil and fishmeal that they use in feeds. The harvests of smaller, forage fish (like sardines) that are traditionally used in feeds are projected to stay stable at best or to decline at worst.

Converting otherwise wasted fish drives industry profits by making sustainability a basic part of the business.

Impact IQ: What’s another emerging area of innovation?

Fish 2.0: Information technology solutions, like software, databases and brokerage companies that will help fishermen to shorten supply chains and to have more control over whom their catch is sold to and at what price.

Some of the Fish 2.0 competitors are developing systems to track the health of wild populations, verify the origin of seafood products, and help fishermen garner higher profits. That includes premium prices for the fish that they catch sustainably.

Impact IQ: How?

Fish 2.0: For example, with web-based auction systems and online sales contracting and distribution systems that connect fishermen directly with buyers.

Currently, most fishermen sell their catch to the one business that has offloading and storage privileges on the dock. In many cases, the fishermen do not even know up front how much they will earn from their catch or what price it will get in the market. They are only advised of the price they receive once the distributor has sold the catch and taken their own margin, usually several days after the seafood lands on the dock.

Fishermen work in this system because it is the only option in many cases and because of their need to offload their boats quickly, sell their fish, and get back to sea during open seasons and good weather

Impact IQ: Better data can help retailers, too?

Fish 2.0: Some of these technology solutions offer traceability and tagging to identify fish from a particular farm or boat and track it all the way through the supply chain.

Right now, the complexity of seafood supply chains also makes it difficult for retailers and restaurants to trace where their seafood comes from and ensure that no fraudulent identification of the seafood has occurred in the chain.

These innovations will allow discerning retailers and consumers to have confidence in the freshness, quality, species, and sustainability of the products they buy. It also creates potential for greater price premiums for seafood that meets these requirements. Better pricing and shorter supply chains mean that a larger proportion of the profits can be allocated directly to the fishermen and other stewards of ocean resources.

Impact IQ: What were some of the surprises?

Fish 2.0: One area that appears to be ripe for growth is in new aquaponic technologies that allow for small-scale farming of fish and vegetables together in the same system – literally, growing fish in vegetable gardens. This can be done in a backyard, on a rooftop, or at scale for a commercial enterprise.

Impact IQ: Is that just an eco-novelty, or a serious business opportunity?

Fish 2.0: Many areas of the world do not have access to fresh fish and have growing populations in need of protein — in deserts or other inland geographies that do not have strong supply chains for food distribution from coastal areas or which lack enough water supply for traditional agriculture. There are aquaculture technologies that allow for cultivation of fish in these areas, but they have largely required too much energy and water to be profitable.

These aquaponics systems reduce the amount of freshwater needed to produce fresh vegetables and also allow for fish to be co-cultivated alongside the produce. This local-level farming also lowers the distribution and transportation costs for fresh food.

Impact IQ: So local, organic fish is the new frontier of “eat local”?

Fish 2.0: The demand for local food products is growing in North America, Europe, and Japan. We are seeing new seafood businesses that are taking advantage of this interest in healthy, local and sustainable food, helping brand their product and sell directly to consumers.

For example, some of these efforts help fishermen tell personal stories around the seafood that interest and keep customers, while others focus on promoting fish as a healthy protein source.

Investing in both fish and agricultural businesses offers a way for investors interested in regional food systems to diversify their portfolios, and to have their investment allocations reflect all of the food on their plates.

Impact IQ: What’s next for Fish 2.0?

Fish 2.0: Our goal is to connect investors with viable businesses in sustainable seafood. We would love to have more folks involved in Fish 2.0 as the competition progresses.

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According to legend, the ancient Olympic Games were founded by Heracles, a son of Zeus (Greek god). The first Olympic Games for which were held in 776 BCE (though it is generally believed that the Games had been going on for many years already). The ancient Olympic Games grew and continued to be played every four years for nearly 1200 years. In 393 CE, the Roman emperor Theodosius I, abolished the Games because of their pagan influences.

Approximately 1500 years later, a young Frenchmen named Pierre de Coubertin began the revival of the Olympic Games. Coubertin’s attempt to get France interested in sports was not met with enthusiasm but he believed that, the experiment to revive the Olympics Games was worth it no matter the end results. He was willing to leave his blood and sweat on the field doing it. In 1890, he organized and founded a sports organization and in two years, Coubertin first pitched his idea to revive the Olympic Games. Though Coubertin was not the first to propose the revival of the Olympic Games, he was the most “unreasonable” and persistent of them of all. Two years later, he organized a meeting 79 delegates from nine countries to arouse their interest by speaking about the revival of the Olympics Games. The delegate voted unanimously for the Olympics Games and they decided to form the first the International Olympic Committee (IOC; Comité Internationale Olympique) in 1894.

Two years later, the first Olympic Games (Athletics, Cycling, Wrestling, Shooting, Tennis, Fencing, Swimming, Gymnastics and Weightlifting) was held in Athens. The evolution of the Olympic Movement during the 20th and 21st centuries has resulted in several changes to the Olympic Games. Some of these adjustments include the creation of the Winter Games for ice and winter sports, the Paralympic Games for athletes with a disability, and the Youth Olympic Games for teenage athletes. Now when we think of the Olympics, we think about the Gold Medals, Cal Lewis, and Usain Bolt record as the fastest man in the competition. In Ghana, we usually hope and pray that our athletes come home with just any medal to make us proud.

But what really define the Olympics for me are those inspirational moments that dramatize the power and resilience of the human spirit. Pierre de Coubertin persisted despite facing many hurdles; he succeeded in reviving the Olympics Games. That’s the true power of human spirit. He is national symbol of France and he reminds us of the capacity of the human race to overcome any obstacle.

Many scientist, environmentalist, social entrepreneurs and funders in time past have made tremendous strides in revitalizing our increasingly fatigued world. One person who deserves a gold medal is Myshkin Inqwale, inventor of ToucHB. ToucHB is a portable, mobile phone-sized device to diagnose and monitor anemia non-invasively i.e. without needles. The technology works on an optical principle and gives out results instantly. He succeeded in building it after 32 attempts.

Mohamed Yunus, a Nobel Peace Prize recipient also revolutionized the finance sector by starting microfinance for the poor. The microfinance industry has grown into a multi-billion dollar industry by extending financial services to the world’s poor because sufficient data was made available to investors to discover a way to understand risk and opportunity.

During a Facebook chat with Kevin Jones, convener of SOCAP, we discussed how we (social entrepreneurs and funders) can make a more conscious effort in incorporating the interest of the planet in our solutions. He shared with me the SOCAP 2013 conference track for ocean health and long term interest of attracting investment to bio-cultural resilience and the idea of building a bio-cultural resilience tool (oh yes, it was confusing at first).

The principles from the resilience shown in reviving the Olympic Games and the possibility of collecting and translating sufficient data to revolutionize the microfinance industry can be borrowed to preserve global oceans. Our quality of life today and the sustainability of our planet for the future depend on the ocean as our largest natural resource, as a habitat for countless species, and as a source of food and livelihoods.

To get entrepreneurs to understand the nature of the opportunity in revitalizing the oceans and to get impact investors to look at the ocean as a market opportunity, we need the bio-cultural resilience tool to collect and transmit data that can easily be consumed by various stakeholders. The bio-cultural resilience tool is the “International Olympic Committee” for the ocean and its “delegates” will be the socially and environmentally focused funders and entrepreneurs. It is a platform where both environmentally and socially focused funders are linked into a better and more complete deals than either could do on their own. This tool is a ‘Big Game’ with so many moving parts like lightweight messaging tool, due diligence tool and storytelling tool.

What this means is that Farmerline is willing to explore being the messaging backbone in the bio-cultural resilience tool. It’s an opportunity to enter new markets and also scale quickly. This experiment is worth undertaking because of the diversity and experience in the team behind it, a group of young Ghanaian technology entrepreneurs and a more experienced network of American Impact Investors. Happy Birthday to myself and Kevin Jones. Let’s see how the story unfolds…

About the Author

Alloysius Attah co-founded Farmerline, a mobile venture offering improved information access and communication pathways for smallholder farmers and agricultural stakeholders. He is passionate scaling technology to smallholder farmers across Africa. Alloysius brings to his peers, colleagues and community a sense of possibility and renewed enthusiasm. He is TEDxAccra speaker and an Echoing Green Fellowship 2013 semi-finalist. He studied Fisheries at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana and also has experience in using mobile and web technologies for development

Join Zealyst Co-Founders Martina Welke & Britta Jacobs for breakfast at Tilth on Friday, June 7, 2013! The event is based in Seattle, WA.–spread the word to your networks if you can’t personally make it!

Pipeline Fellowship Founder & CEO Natalia Oberti Noguera will discuss how her organization’s changing the face of angel investing and she will interview special guest Barbara J. Prowant on Barbara’s efforts to increase diversity in the VC and entrepreneurship communities.

Check the Eventbrite page for details and registration.

In case you missed it, this year SOCAP is

Our question to you: what important trends, developments, and innovations are accelerating the good economy? We just started accepting submissions a little over a week ago, and we’re already seeing some interesting trends emerge.

Radial Collaboration

The growing trend towards bigger and better collaboration in the name of impact continues. Our very first submission explores a Brazilian case-study of a fund / accelerator partnership with a Village Capital twist. Another post looks at the collective impact model that has had wild success with traditional philanthropy, and explores opportunities to create collaborative funds with impact investors. A third explores the concept of a truly three sided market.

Crowdfunding, Community, and Government

Many sessions address civic life and the role of government in both supporting and hindering opportunities to accelerate the good economy. From the aptly titled, ‘It’s the Deficit Dummy‘, a session looking to reframe the social impact bonds discussion, to a discussion on innovations in pay for success models. A few other sessions on this theme:

• Crowdfunding for community good
• What role should the state play in the democratization of capital?
• Urban Innovation, a discussion of how urban prototyping and bottom up innovation are changing how people experience and interact in cities.

Innovations in Funding

Speaking of innovation, our community is always pushing the boundaries and looking for innovations in funding social impact. A few sessions help us get back to the basics on this topic, exploring how innovation happens, and imploring us not to forget the importance of due diligence in pushing the sector forward. Another explores growing trends in impact investing, and specifically how regional hubs are shaping the landscape.

Specific innovations that folks are looking to discuss include building a credit market for nonprofits, thinking beyond traditional exit strategies towards more novel methods of impact investing. Our very own SOCAP convener, Kevin Jones, has joined the fray and is proposing a new gender lens approach to impact investing.

Tools to Support Smarter Investing and Greater Impact:

Three different sessions propose new tools to help us make smarter investments or grow our impact as entrepreneurs:

• Making it easier for planet focused investors to co-invest with people focused investors
• Real ecosystem tools platforms: How technology can make the magic happen
• Reshaping education with live student data

Building Better Start-Ups

And of course, the ever important: how do we continue to build better start-ups doing this work? From innovations with B-corporations, to strategies for Investing in People. GEO submitted a session on Tools for grant makers to create pathways to grown impact. Some great proposals in this topic include:

• Lean start-up for the social sector
• 5 key considerations in designing a social enterprise
• A startup approach and VC equity for good

Taking a Deep Dive

There are also some areas in which people are ready to take a deep dive and exchange on specific areas of opportunity. Those include:

• Climate adaptation
• Effective last mile distribution to the base of the pyramid
• What’s happening in organics

As you can see, the contributions already are rich. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Submissions close June 15th, and we’re eager to get all your thoughts. How do these ideas resonate with you? What content do you want to see? Let us know over at SOCAP Open.

“It was an amazing experience and opportunity to share an issue that keeps me up at night – ensuring that all students, regardless of life circumstances, have access to a quality education. Thank you for your support.”

–Alex Bernadotte

One of the foundation’s questions was, if impact investors are the supply side, providing capital, what are the evolving needs of the demand side, those receiving it? What activities could foundations, governments and other institutions take to be sure the impact entrepreneurs, these tireless small companies working to create lasting improvements on communities, both domestically and globally, succeed to their greatest potential?

Among individuals who worked on the report are Cathy Clark, CASE at Duke University & Investors’ Circle Board of Directors and Bonny Moellenbrock, Investors’ Circle & SJF Institute.

Find out more about the release and download the Executive Summary to learn about the topic.