In the last few years, foundations have been discovering that they can create social good beyond the comfort of just nonprofit grantmaking, and investors have been developing strategies to generate significant financial and social impact.

Thus, the term impact investing was launched into the financial and social innovation sectors.

Essentially, impact investing describes an emerging asset class focused on channeling large-scale private funding to social entrepreneurs and social enterprises dedicated to solving the world’s biggest problems.
 
Echoing Green has partnered with The Rockefeller Foundation to explore key challenges in routing capital to early-stage social ventures serving the needs of poor or vulnerable populations around the world. With better and more robust data and insights, we believe that Echoing Green can contribute to overcoming structural barriers in this critical sector and help to significantly increase the rate of expansion of the overall marketplace and the corresponding social impact.

We’re excited about this emerging trend, and the feed below features our recent thinking (like the rise of hybrid social enterprises) and ideas (like recoverable grants) around the impact investing marketplace. What do you think?

Switching Things Up: New Corporate Structures

We’ve seen an emerging trend with social enterprises–testing out business models. Balancing the art of doing good and doing well, social enterprises don’t always fit into either a nonprofit or for-profit box. Read More.

Capital Revolution: Venture Forward 2012


DiligentDeal and Gust held the Venture Forward 2012 Conference at the New York Academy of Sciences on June 20, 2012. With attendees ranging from individual angel investors to well-known entrepreneurs from across the country, it was a particularly exciting and informative event. Read More.

Innovative Partnerships: Social Impact Bonds


Recently, Echoing Green participated in a discussion about social impact bonds hosted by McKinsey & Company on the firm’s recent report From Potential to Action: Bringing Social Impact Bonds to the US. Social Impact Bonds are multi-stakeholder partnerships, not bonds in the traditional sense, that bring together non-profits, government, and impact investors to more effectively use resources and achieve better outcomes targeting preventive interventions. Read More.

The Buzz 6-8-12


Our quick read on the top tweets, news, and buzz circulating in the field of changemaking. This past week: new cities as hubs of entrepreneurship, an emerging modern capitalism, and a new class of Echoing Green and Black Male Achievement Fellows.Read more.

The Rise of the Hybrids

Echoing Green partners with researchers Julie Battilana and Matthew Lee from Harvard Business School on the first large-scale, quantitative study of emerging social entrepreneurs. Today, Stanford Social Innovation Review released an article on the rise and challenges of hybrid social enterprises that combine aspects of nonprofits and for-profits.

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Echoing Green is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization