Defining a Conscious Economy: A Glossary of Acronyms and Terms

By Beth Busenhart and Charlie Kuhn, App-X

We are experiencing a renaissance of sorts in business where leaders are recognizing the power of a market based approach to affect positive social and environmental change. Capital is being raised and deployed to facilitate change in the form of Impact Investment vehicles. Impact Investing alone is expected to become a $500 billion industry in the next ten years.

From top business schools and the boardrooms of corporate America to entrepreneurs in the developing world, momentum is building and so is the repertoire of buzzwords, acronyms and nuanced terminology. As a diverse set of stakeholders tries to define a way forward and shape a new economy, here is a useful glossary of major impact investing terms. On CSRwire Talkback.

Private Equity: Bain or Boon for our Economy?

By Francesca Rheannon, CSRwire

The Bain Capital model of private equity privatizes gains and socializes losses, but there’s another private equity model that scores wins for both investors and society, one that seeks to leverage not debt but capital to protect the environment and improve society. (It includes both venture capital and private equity funds.) Francesca Rheannon reports on CSRwire Talkback.

The Social Enterprise Ecosystem & Social Capital Products

By Steve Wright, Grameen Foundation [@conches]

Current definitions of social enterprise are based on how social enterprises are like financial enterprises except they are required to create good in addition to revenue. Financial enterprises are those enterprises that are not required to create good. They are only required to create revenue; therefore, it is of course possible that they create bad.

But is bad created by a financial enterprise by design or a negative externality meaning it is a consequence of the work but not an intended output? According to Steve Wright, we need to change the definition of social enterprise to one that is categorically different from financial enterprise. Continue reading on SoCap.

Risk & Reward: Taking on Homelessness & Recidivism

By David Bank [@DavidBank]

Shifting the risk for delivering measureable social progress from government to private investors is supposed to be one of the key features of “social impact bonds,” a promising new way to finance programs tackling nitty-gritty challenges such as homelessness and prison recidivism. But investors have been wary of shouldering such risks on their own. The two social impact bond programs announced this week, in Massachusetts and New York City, will provide early evidence of what the market might bear. Continue reading on Impact IQ.

The Whole -- Less Than the Sum of its Parts?

By Gary Ford, President and CEO, MicroCredit Enterprises

Why do organizations that truly care about poverty in the developing world, and share a mission to eradicate it, not cooperate more? Why do we continue to operate fragmented nonprofits and NGOs, each based on its own similar vision of a better world?

According to Gary Ford, "Regardless of the creativity and zeal of many traditional poverty alleviation models, there are some fundamental problems with our current efforts because poverty is not segmented, but rather a connected set of inequalities that can quickly turn into bigger issues with greater consequences." Continue reading on CSRwire Talkback.