Money + Meaning

Organizations are expanding their impact mindset to create transparent, holistic approaches that can help shape sustainable supply chains and advance diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. In this Money + Meaning conversation, Amy Brachio, EY Global Deputy Vice Chair for Sustainability, and Imogen Rose-Smith of Confluence Partners discuss how organizations and investors are addressing social and environmental issues to build positive impact on communities.

This episode of Money and Meaning is a recording of a fireside chat at the 2023 Sorenson Impact Summit with Randy Shumway, Founder of Cicero Group, and Geoff Davis, CEO of Sorenson Impact. Randy discusses how his more than 20 years of volunteering with people who are experiencing homelessness have influenced Cicero Group’s consulting work for social impact with governments and foundations. And he shares why evidence-based approaches are necessary to effectively address the increasing dilemma of homelessness throughout the United States.

This episode of Money and Meaning is a recording of an onstage conversation at SOCAP22 between Dr. Allison Boxer, Managing Director of Sorenson Impact Center, and Dr. Roslyn Artis, President and CEO of Benedict College. The college in Columbia, South Carolina, is among the highest-ranked historically Black colleges and universities, or HBCUs, in the Southeast. Benedict College is also a partner in Sorenson Impact Center’s MAPS Project. Using data and a student-centric approach, the MAPS Project aims to help higher education institutions adapt to changing enrollment trends and better serve the needs of more diverse student bodies. In this podcast, Dr. Artis and Dr. Boxer discuss opportunities and challenges at Benedict College and how innovative financial structures can help HBCUs support students on a path toward academic and professional success.

Empowering women impact entrepreneurs to reach their fullest potential and drive social and environmental change is the goal of the Cartier Women’s Initiative (CWI), which became SOCAP’s newest Entrepreneur Program partner in 2022. Through the SOCAP Entrepreneur Program, CWI fellows and other selected social entrepreneurs from around the globe gain access to SOCAP’s broad network of investors, donors, and changemakers. 

In fields from fashion to wastewater management to health care, the CWI fellows are building solutions to address some of the world’s biggest challenges. At SOCAP22, several CWI social entrepreneurs shared more about their company’s impact story and the challenges of their work in conversation with Sarah Sterling, Executive Director of Entrepreneurship at SOCAP Global. This episode of SOCAP’s Money + Meaning podcast features highlights of conversations with Angel Chang of ANGEL CHANG, Ting Shih of ClickMedix, Rebecca Hui of Roots Studio, Orianna Bretschger of Aquacycl, and Kelly Nguyen of DrKumo Inc.

Listen to the conversation to hear from these entrepreneurs and learn about the support that the SOCAP community can provide to advance the entrepreneurs’ dreams and amplify collective impact. 

For 30 years, Advantage Capital has imagined new possibilities for impact by investing private institutional capital in businesses from traditionally underserved communities. Ryan Brennan, Managing Director at Advantage Capital, says the firm’s goal is to get funding to innovative entrepreneurs poised for growth by moving “capital to places where it doesn’t naturally go.” 

Brennan is featured in the newest episode of SOCAP’s Money + Meaning podcast recorded live at SOCAP22 in San Francisco. In a conversation with Imogen Rose-Smith of Confluence Partners, Brennan discusses Advantage Capital’s 38-question investment matrix, impact measurement, institutional investors, and more. 

“Our ethos is quality jobs, real wages, ability to create and grow wealth in some of the toughest communities in the United States,” Brennan says. “We’re going to places capital doesn’t go, probably for a reason.”

Founded 30 years ago as one of the first participants in a public-private partnership designed to attract venture capital firms to Louisiana, Advantage Capital has since grown to serve 80 funds and 17 states. “We have this mission of taking capital to New Orleans, to rural Nebraska, to upstate Connecticut and finding these incredible entrepreneurs that in a lot of cases are being missed by traditional sources,” Brennan says.

With an investor base that is predominantly insurance companies and banks, Advantage Capital stretches beyond traditional impact investor sources by offering a fixed-income investment, he said. “What we’ve found over 30 years is that they might’ve gotten into it for a fixed rate of return; now they love the impact.”

Listen to the full conversation!

Biases that limit investors and support organizations are often reinforced by a lack of market visibility. One unexploited solution involves using systems data to boost the visibility of the relationships that small and growing businesses have in the entrepreneurial ecosystem in which they operate. Featured voices: Jason Eaves, CEO of Discover Markets; Adesuwa Rhodes, Founder & CEO of Aruwa Capital Management; and Pratap Raju, Founding Partner of the Climate Collective Foundation.

For the third year, SOCAP Global is pleased to present the State of the Field and Practice of Impact Investing. Join Fran Seegull, President of the U.S. Impact Investing Alliance; Monique Aiken, Managing Director or TIIP & Co-founder of Make Justice Normal; and Cathy Clark, Faculty Director at CASE at Duke to hear about the current state, emerging trends, threats and opportunities as impact investing moves more mainstream. This podcast is presented in advance of SOCAP22, held Oct. 17-20 at YBCA in San Francisco.

For 75 years UNICEF has been supporting the well-being of children around the globe, helping to save more children’s lives than any other humanitarian organization. In 2011, UNICEF USA launched an impact investment fund, the Impact Fund for Children (IF4C). Since the fund’s launch, IF4C has deployed close to half a billion dollars. On this episode, Alex Kravitz is joined by the President of the Impact Fund for Children, Cristina Shapiro. They discuss the innovative fund design that utilizes both grant and investment capital, the multiplying effect of investing in children, and new ways the IF4C is thinking about the use of investment capital to confront challenges facing children around the globe.

On this episode, host Alex Kravitz is joined by Jasper van Brakel, the President and CEO of RSF Social Finance. Since the 1980s, RSF has been driving capital to social enterprises supporting a more just and regenerative world. As an intermediary, RSF has long supported direct relationships between transactional partners, which led to the launch of their innovative Community Pricing Gatherings in 2009. These meetings bring together investors in their flagship Social Investment Fund, borrowers from the fund, and RSF staff to set interest rates each quarter. Instead of relying on invisible market forces to dictate interest rates, these meetings create direct relationships between investor and borrower and have proven to be a risk mitigant for investors. During the conversation, Alex and Jasper discuss the Community Pricing Gatherings, other forms of stakeholder governance, RSF’s new Racial Justice Collaborative, and much more.

“It’s not just about what you invest in, it’s about how you invest.” In their new book ‘Letting Go’, Ben Wrobel and Meg Massey make the case that in order to effectively tackle social challenges, philanthropists and impact investors need to cede control of funding decisions to people with lived experiences of the challenges they are trying to solve. During this episode, Meg and Ben join host, Alex Kravitz, to discuss the origin of the participatory funding movement, examples of innovative organizations working to center community voice, and some of the differences between building participation into philanthropic grantmaking vs. impact investing.