Tagged - equity

Attendees of the Skoll World Forum share their thoughts about the event's impact: a passion for the community it creates and the opportunities it offers – but some doubts about how representative it is.

INTERVIEW: How do you ensure that the money shareholders make from investing in your business is used for positive impact? A pioneering ‘equity for good’ deal backed by Heineken and Paul Polman aims to avoid unintended negative consequences.

Social Investment Scotland subsidiary secures £1m for its Impact First fund from Chroma Ventures, a Scotland-based investment arm of video game developer, 4J Studios.

Group urges social investors to step up inclusion and equity efforts with new pledges, following damning findings last week from the influential Adebowale Commission.

Global leads on diversity, equity and inclusion – including from eBay and Bad Robot – tell the Ashoka Changemaker Summit that no-one is an expert and learning from diverse groups and people's lived experiences is the only path ahead.

Government-backed Covid lending schemes have been a lifeline – but in the long term, high levels of debt cause problems. One solution: transitioning at-risk, viable private businesses into employee or community ownership at scale. 

Crunching the numbers from social sector organisations that have closed could help others to predict and prevent financial fragility. From salary spend to income type, financial benchmarking specialist MyCake suggests key questions to explore.

Covid-19 has highlighted the fact that many common forms of social investment are inflexible and have failed the social enterprises they seek to support, says Ben Smith, head of social investment at Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. But being patient and flexible is not without its challenges.

Must social enterprises take what they can get – or can they shape the (patient) social finance they need? Lisa Ashford draws on experiences with community shares and investment platforms in the UK and Africa to explore a way forward.