Reports from Alliance magazine

The Philanthropy UK Newsletter is grateful to Alliance magazine for its permission to reproduce the following summaries of its event reports. The full reports can be accessed at www.alliancemagazine.org.

By Lucy Bernholz

13-15 October 2008, San Francisco, USA

The first Social Capital Markets Conference brought together more than 600 social entrepreneurs, non-profit leaders, social investors and foundation executives from several countries in San Francisco in mid-October. Enthusiasm for new ways to think about businesses with a social purpose, revenue-sustaining non-profits, and other hybrid approaches to markets and public benefit formed the big tent under which the oversold crowd gathered. Despite the recent economic upheaval, those in attendance at the conference seemed convinced that investments aimed at both social and financial benefit are still solid bets.

At the core of the conference were discussions about what an overall market of these opportunities would and should look like. Sessions ranged from business planning for social enterprise to new ways of measuring social impact to market-rate venture capital firms that invest in environmental solutions or health and wellness providers. Technology also plays a key role in these emerging markets and enterprises. Web companies such as socialmarkets.org and missionmarkets.com demonstrated their user-generated ROI (return on investment) tools. Experts in mission investing spoke to the various needs for metrics and intermediaries to expand that market, and B Corporations (a new type of corporation that uses the power of business to create public benefit) shared their progress in registering individual enterprises as well as their broader policy change aspirations.

There was a great deal of deal-making and the conference revealed its youthful countenance by being live-blogged across more than two dozen sites and covered on twitter, facebook, linkedin and fora.tv. Planning for a 2009 conference is already under way, but no one need wait a year to carry on the discussions as they continue on facebook, linkedin, googlegroups and Ning. Simply search for SoCap08 to find these ongoing conversations.

Lucy Bernholz is President and Founder of Blueprint Research & Design. Email lucy@blueprintrd.com

By Jacob Harold

8 October 2008, Stanford University, USA

In the heart of Silicon Valley – and in the midst of a global economic crisis – the Stanford Social Innovation Review drew an audience of nearly 250 philanthropists, non-profit managers and social entrepreneurs for a day-long conference on the evolving world of online philanthropy. The conference brought together executives from 14 online giving sites, making it the largest-yet public gathering of leaders in internet-enabled philanthropy. Are they ‘Changing the Face of Philanthropy’, as the conference title suggests?

Lloyd Nimetz, co-founder and president of the online giving platform HelpArgentina, opened the conference. He used the novel method of posing a set of questions to the audience which they were able to answer via text messages (SMS). The – often mixed – results were displayed on the main screen. The question ‘Are donors on the supply or demand side of the online marketplaces?’ came out as a virtual tie, a reminder that there is not yet a consensus on whether online philanthropy helps donors to make decisions based on social impact or if it is only a mechanism to reduce transaction costs. Either way, could that increase total giving?

In a panel led by Lucy Bernholz of Blueprint Research & Design, panellists argued that the biggest challenge to giving websites is driving traffic to them. Bill Meehan of McKinsey and the Stanford Graduate School of Business pointed out that online marketplaces account for less that 1% of charitable giving in the US.

There is obvious potential for online platforms to give donors access to good information to help them make better decisions. Hundreds of millions of dollars have already passed through such sites. The challenge over the next few years is to build something worthy of tens of billions of dollars of smarter philanthropy.

Jacob Harold is Philanthropy Program Officer at the Hewlett Foundation. Email jharold@hewlett.org