Social Investing

back

Social Investing

Related Links

Rockefeller Supports ‘Social’ Stock Market Study
March 22, 2008; FT.com
By Jonathan Guthrie, Enterprise Editor
excerpt

A “social stock exchange” where ethical investors can trade shares in worthy enterprises could be set up under plans announced on Friday. The exchange would aim to combine profitable trading with social or environmental missions. Clean technologies, healthcare, first world development projects and help for disadvantaged communities would be included in the exchange.

The Rockefeller Foundation, one of the world’s best-known philanthropic organisations, is [supporting] the feasibility study. If this identifies demand for a social stock exchange, the market would be launched next year.

Antony Bugg-Levine, [Rockefeller Foundation] managing director, said it chose the UK as the site for the feasibility study partly because of firm government support for social enterprise. “The government’s active approach to the third sector is creating a better environment than in some other countries,” he said.

Government initiatives have included the creation of a separate form of incorporation for social enterprises and plans for a social investment bank funded with unclaimed assets held by financial institutions. Well-known UK social enterprises include the Eden Project, the Cornish botanical visitor attraction, Fifteen, a restaurant chain that employs disadvantaged young people, and Big Issue magazine sold by homeless people.

Mr Bugg-Levine said the exchange could provide a handy investment forum for wealthy philanthropists. He said: “There is a new class of rich people unhappy with the old binary system of making money with one hand and giving it away with the other.”

Grant Made for 'Social' Stock Market Study
April 3, 2008; Chronicle of Philanthropy
By Nicole Wallace
excerpt

The Rockefeller Foundation has announced a $500,000 grant to study the feasibility of creating a stock market for businesses that seek to achieve a social mission and make a profit. 'The current lack of a stock exchange that enables enterprises to list without losing control of their social mission inhibits some very good companies from gaining the expansion capital that they need,' says Antony Bugg-Levine, a managing director at the New York foundation.

...The grant to the U.K. Social Stock Exchange is part of a larger effort by the Rockefeller Foundation to help create an environment that will nurture the development and growth of businesses that combine social and financial goals..."The existence of such a standard would facilitate investments in these companies," says Mr. Bugg-Levine, "because people seeking to make impact investments would not need to identify for themselves each time they make an investment whether the company they're investing in has a genuine social purpose."

top of the page