Social Enterprise Symposium: Transforming Business for the Global Good
5 – 9 p.m. Thursday, March 25
Frank Auditorium, 1524 Van Munching Hall

Financing Social Change

Financing Social Change focused on socially responsible investing and determining appropriate ways to measure outcomes.  The session was moderated by Cliff Rossi, Tyser Teaching Fellow and Managing Director of the Center on Financial Policy and Corporate Governance at the Smith School of Business.

Sona Gandhi serves as Deputy to the President and CEO of FINCA International, a microfinance institution with more than 700,000 clients on the group spanning 21 different programs and five continents.  Sona described the challenges that come from changes in the Administration, regulatory policy and funding priorities.  These factors can greatly impact the long term sustainability of the institution.  She suggested that the capacity of the workforce can also be an issue because FINCA operates in places that may seem like unlikely locales for starting new businesses. FINCA offers a variety of different variations on loans, recognizing that microfinance isn’t a panacea for all situations. Sona discussed the importance of working with leaders in the local community in order to get support and tailor outreach to meet the local norms and build support for their endeavors.  Sona concluded by discussing measurements of impact, including efforts of organizations within FINCA, in order to ensure that the company continues to be effective as it grows. 

Amber Kuchar, Junior Investment Officer at the Calvert Foundation, described the biggest challenge that Calvert faces as proving that their model is sustainable.  Lending money requires that there will be repayment. Calvert funds small businesses and underserved communities with high levels of unemployment and significant risk. Amber discussed the tension between providing capital to these groups and Calvert’s repayment requirement to prove that the model is sustainable.  Calvert has been expanding its marketing to broker dealers in order to facilitate global capital and access larger pools of investors. Amber concluded by talking about recent trends to calculate the social return on investment and how that data will help motivate future investments.

Mari Kuraishi is the Founder and President of the GlobalGiving Foundation, an organization that supports social enterprises by connecting them to a global audience. She explained that one of the biggest challenges that social entrepreneurs face are barriers to entry. She expressed her goal as making it just as easy to start a social enterprise as it would be to start a Subway franchise.  In any given year half of the donations that flow through the GlobalGiving Foundation come from corporations either to carry out their CSR efforts, cause marketing, employee giving or corporate philanthropy.  Mari suggested that technology has contributed significantly to increased social action by helping people to communicate directly. Technology will make it even easier to create direct connections that grow the field and inspire people.

Dan Morrison is the Founder and CEO of Citizen Effect, a vehicle that empowers citizen philanthropists, enabling everyone to be their own Bill Gates. Citizen Effect uses technology to allow individuals to identify interesting projects and provides them with the tools they need to support that project.  Dan stated that most people are motivated to give because someone asks them to, so it’s important to capitalize on that social component. One of the biggest impediments to expanding the global impact of Citizen Effect’s work is the limited toolset. In the last ten years microfinance has exploded and now people are trying to use microfinance as the solution to all problems. It is important to respect the community and explore all the possible solutions.  Dan stressed the need to work with the local community in order to find the right answers to their unique challenges. He also discussed Citizen Effect’s strategy of providing companies with a way to engage their employees in giving projects by empowering employees to raise money for causes and to engage social networks to create a broader community of givers. Dan concluded by explaining that at Citizen Effect they view donations as a transaction that buys impact and improves the lives of the community on the ground. (Sarina Gerson, MBA '11)