What is your role in the Social Capital Market?
We are creating platforms to connect social enterprises in Asia Pacific with impact investors around the globe. We have recently launched a private placement platform — Impact Partners (www.ImpactPartners.com) — which profiles Asian Social Enterprises seeking investment capital and connects these enterprises to our membership base of sophisticated impact investors.
What is the single most important step to creating a more established social capital market?
The networks and infrastructure and connections that exist in the social capital markets have to increase in maturity to a point where they rival those in the traditional capital markets. Social Enterprises seeking investment capital need to know where they can go to find investment capital. We hear from investors that there are not enough good deals. On the other hand, we hear from social enterprises that there is not enough capital available. I don’t think either is correct. Both sides just need to know how to find one another.
What does Money + Meaning = to you? What should the social capital market stand for?
The social capital markets should allow all of us as investors to integrate our philanthropic impulses with our business and financial sense in a way that allows us to express our ethical convictions through our investments. The social capital markets should be about expanding the amount of capital that is seeking to achieve social benefit by tapping into investment pools in addition to philanthropic pools of capital.
