San Francisco

American society has a capital-allocation problem, Julie Sunderland, senior program investment officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, told participants here at the Social Capital Markets conference.

On the one hand, huge pools of money in the private capital markets are ruthlessly invested to maximize profit, she said. At the same time, public resources are dwindling.

"In this room, we find ourselves between those two spheres, which is both an exciting and a daunting place to be," said Ms. Sunderland.

Even though the Gates Foundation is still at the beginning of its effort to put $400-million in investments that help advance the same goals as its grant making, the foundation is excited by the possibilities social investing offers, she said.

"If we can leverage our philanthropic capital to attract socially conscious investors and build a cadre of really...

San Francisco

This spring the state of Maryland created a new legal structure—a benefit corporation—for companies that blend business with social or environmental good. The legislation requires that benefit corporations consider how decisions will affect employees, local jurisdictions, and the environment rather than just looking at shareholders' interest.

The new structure went into effect on October 1, this past Friday, and by Monday 11 benefit corporations had registered in the state, Jay Coen Gilbert, co-founder of B Lab, the nonprofit group that has been pushing for the new corporate form, told the audience at the Social Capital Markets conference here.

"So you create the infrastructure—sort of the Field of Dreams strategy, 'If you build it, they will come'—and there are 11 in one day," he joked with the audience. "That's only one state, so we figure it's pretty close to world...

San Francisco

The Global Impact 50 index, a new effort announced here at the Social Capital Markets conference, will bring together the leading managers of funds that seek both a financial return and a social or environmental benefit.

The index—a project of the Calvert and Cordes Foundations and Giving Assets, with financial support from the Rockefeller Foundation—will be an important step in raising public awareness of social investing, Ron D. Cordes, co-chairman of Genworth Financial Wealth Management and founder of the Cordes Foundation, told conference participants.

"The people in this room are clearly changing the rules of the game," he said. "The problem is that people outside this room are barely aware that a game is being played. And of those few who are aware, they're not aware of who the players are, what the rules are, or where the playing field is even located."

The index...

San Francisco

The Hoop Fund is a new Web site that uses an approach popularized by Kiva to increase the market for fair-trade goods, such as chocolate and hand-woven clothing, and help the farmer and craft cooperatives in the developing world that make the products gain access to capital to improve their businesses.

Visitors to the Hoop site can buy Coral Jasmine Rice grown by the Surin Cooperative in Thailand, but they can also make a loan to help the cooperative buy a freezer to preserve seeds from 35 threatened native rice species.

Giving people the opportunity to do both will create a stronger bond between consumers and the products they buy, turning them into advocates, says Patrick Donohue, chief executive and co-founder of the Hoop.

"If you invest in the production of coffee, that's your coffee too," he says. "So you can go out and say to your friends and family, 'I helped...

San Francisco

The Obama administration is again drawing on the field of social enterprise for new ideas about how to solve social problems.

The United States Agency for International Development is starting Development Innovation Ventures, which will be modeled on a venture-capital fund, to identify creative approaches to international development and help them grow, Maura O'Neill, the agency's chief innovation officer, announced here at the Social Capital Markets conference.

The new fund will accept applications from both nonprofit and for-profit entities.

While the fund will be modeled on the venture-capital process, the money will be awarded in the form of grants. The agency will divide the awards into three stages. Early-stage projects will receive up to $100,000. Efforts that are in the second stage will receive up to $1-million, and projects that have grown to significant scale...

San Francisco

A new study estimates the potential market for investments that seek financial as well as social or environmental returns at $120-billion. The good news for charities is that most study participants who said they would put money into such investments said they would draw the funds from their investment portfolios rather than the money they set aside for philanthropy.

The Money for Good project, conducted by Hope Consulting, in San Francisco, surveyed 4,000 people with incomes of $80,000 or higher about their attitudes, behavior, and motivation regarding charitable giving and social investing.

Ten percent of survey participants said they were very interested in mission-related investing, while 38 percent reported they were interested but wanted to learn more. Forty percent said they were not sure yet, and 13 percent said they were not at all interested.

When people who...

San Francisco

More than 1,200 investors, entrepreneurs, financiers, nonprofit officials, foundation executives, and donors have gathered here for Social Capital Markets 2010, a meeting that conference organizers describe as being "at the intersection of money and meaning."

Discussions will focus on the range of ways that investment, enterprise, and business-minded approaches to giving are being married with a desire to do social good in areas such as education, food systems, and international development.

Scheduled speakers include Matt Flannery, chief executive of Kiva.org; Julie Sunderland, senior program investment officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; and Willy Foote, founder of Root Capital, a nonprofit organization that makes loans to agriculture businesses in Africa and Latin America.

Live streaming video will be available throughout the meeting on Monday and Tuesday...

Atlanta

Cellphone donating came into its own in the days and weeks after the earthquake in Haiti when American donors gave nearly $50-million to aid survivors via text message.

But not every organization or every mission will have the urgency or the news-media attention to drive that kind of a response, George Weiner, chief technology officer at Do Something, told participants at the Nonprofit Technology Conference.

For many charities, asking supporters for their cellphone numbers and starting to send them informational messages is the place to start, not asking for money right away, he said.

"A lot of what nonprofits do is they ask for marriage on a first date," said Mr. Weiner. "It's hard to find a wife that way."

Other advice from the session: Charities that do run text-to-give campaigns need to remind potential donors that they need to respond to the text message that asks them ...

Atlanta

Blogging has evolved into an intense, rapid-fire medium—and it's not for the faint of heart, the journalist Andrew Sullivan told the roughly 1,450 people gathered here for the Nonprofit Technology Conference.

"It's a little like movie zombies," he told the audience. "They used to be kind of clumsy, lumbering, and slow, but now they come at you really, really fast."

It's important to understand that a blog is not a publication, but rather a broadcast, said Mr. Sullivan, whose 10-year-old blog, The Daily Dish, is read by a million people a month.

"It has to change, ideally at a very brisk pace," he said. "The brisker the pace, the more engaged the readership, and the more obsessive-compulsive the entire co-dependent relationship becomes."

Mr. Sullivan said that any blog that isn't updated at least once an hour was at "an incredible disadvantage," a statement that drew several ...

Atlanta

Charity technology officials, consultants, and company representatives have gathered here for the 2010 Nonprofit Technology Conference.

Sessions will focus on a wide variety of tech topics, including social media, setting up a wireless network, federal technology policy, and storytelling on the Web.

On Friday and Saturday, the Nonprofit Technology Network, which organized the meeting, will be streaming live plenary speeches and six conference sessions—including a presentation on mobile fund raising at 1:30pm Eastern time Friday. A schedule and information about how to tune is available online.