Net Impact has announced the 2012-2013 Gold and Silver standings, awarding Fuqua the prestigious GOLD again!

These standings – based on meeting a rigorous set of requirements for activities, programming, and membership reach – identify the most outstanding chapters in the Net Impact network, which includes 300+ chapters around the world.

Fuqua’s activities this year were led by Presidents Abigail Lundy and Elana Boehm and a fantastic leadership team that brought a diversity of events to the Fuqua community (over half of whom are members of the Net Impact Club).

They began the year with a quarter of the First Year class taking part in a community event called “Day in Durham.”  In February, the Chapter hosted the annual Sustainable Business and Social Impact conference which is the largest of its kind in the southeast region.  Throughout the year, the Chapter offered numerous opportunities to learn about trends in the fields of social impact and sustainability, advance careers through alumni panels and career treks, and socialize with a community of like-minded students.

As Net Impact CEO Liz Maw stated, “These chapters demonstrate just how much can be accomplished when committed individuals decide to make an impact through the work they do.”

We are so proud that Fuqua’s Net Impact Club is consistently rated amongst the top chapters in the world – even winning Graduate Chapter of the Year this past year!  The Chapter’s new leadership – led by Jennifer Fluder and Michelle Kirby – are excited to continue the momentum for the coming year.  They are already working with their leadership team on new initiatives and will be kicking things off with Day in Durham 2013 on August 17th.

About Net Impact: Net Impact is a global community of over 40,000 student and professional leaders creating positive social and environmental change in the workplace and the world. Net Impact is San Francisco-based nonprofit with over 300 chapters worldwide that focuses on providing support, connections, and practical advice to help people in all sectors and job functions create a more just and sustainable future.

This post was co-authored by Cathy Clark and Ben Thornley, and originally posted on the Huffington Post blog.

The surge of interest in impact investing is a relatively recent phenomenon, although the practice of deploying capital with the intent to create measurable social and environmental benefits encompasses and builds on decades of market-oriented international and community development, and microfinance.

According to The Impact Investor, the project on which we are collaborating, the number of self-identified impact investing fund intermediaries has tripled in the last decade, to over 300.

In practice, this means there are relatively fewer funds with proven track records of financial and social performance. It also places a higher value on the insights of those that have succeeded.

Mining these insights is the objective of The Impact Investor. It was also the focus of a third project convening, April 10, ahead of the 2013 Skoll World Forum at Saïd Business School in Oxford, UK. We held previous meetings in 2012 at Skoll, and at SOCAP in San Francisco.

Critically, there a number of commonalities emerging from our case studies of around a dozen leading funds. And while it is too early to call these findings “best practices,” two were presented as “provocations” to an audience of around 80 leading practitioners in Oxford in order to solicit their response.

The first provocation concerns the role of government. Many leading funds have received foundational support from government (development finance institutions being the obvious example), or capital from other investors mandated to provide it, for example through the Community Reinvestment Act in the United States. Some funds are licensed specifically by government to invest for impact, and receive subsidy to do so. Others benefit from tax credits or other sector-oriented mechanisms.

While some sectors are likely to mature beyond the point of subsidy, government is shaping up to be a more active participant in impact investing than ever. This presents opportunities for sure, but also risks. Funds will need to be able to speak the language of public policy. And government moves slower than most practitioners would want.

The second provocation concerns the use of “safety nets.” These come in many forms: guarantees or innovative fund structures in order to underwrite financial performance; or forms of “mission lock” for those that need social performance to be assured, through creative governance arrangements, social targets mandated by policy, or expansive side letters with limited partners. Whatever the details, these safety nets are all intended to diminish the probability of fund underperformance, both financially and socially, especially for the most risk-averse among a larger group of LPs.

Safety nets have undoubtedly been a big draw for early investors, but this also presents some challenges moving forward, particularly with respect to early stage investing, through equity. Financial returns that are contingent on liquidity events are unpredictable. Is the need for safety nets therefore likely to stifle innovation?

The four clips below document the responses to these two provocations from our opening panelists, representing a range of viewpoints: the government official (Kieron Boyle, UK Cabinet Office); the investment intermediary (Mildred Callear, SEAF), the infrastructure provider (Ilse Treurnicht, MARS Discovery District); and the expert observer (Dr. Alex Nicholls, Skoll Center for Social Entrepreneurship, Saïd Business School).

Kieron Boyle of the UK Cabinet Office discusses the “existential crisis” that governments face when identifying points of entry into the impact investing market, including questions about the role of government as an investor and whether policymakers ought to push for innovation in the market or simply refine time-tested models:

Mildred Callear of SEAF identifies several problems with setting up a no-loss strategy for impact investments, noting in particular that such models often turn objectives from “impact first” to simply “no-loss first.” While this approach secures financial performance for investors, it does little to amplify their social returns:

Ilse Treurnicht of MARS Discovery District argues that risk is “part of the innovation equation.” She makes the case that setting up safety nets for impact investments will ultimately detract from the development of innovative market strategies that solve “our wicked problems” – the world’s most critical social and environmental crises:

Alex Nicholls of Saïd Business School at Oxford University argues that “government always matters” in capital markets. Because state capital is very limited in most countries, Nicholls says, governments ought to use their regulatory power to support social finance initiatives:

Now that we have handed out diplomas, said our goodbyes, and are closing out the academic year, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on the year.

We started off with a grand celebration of our 10 year anniversary – complete with cake cutting and TED-style talks from:

• Greg Dees: “Toward an Open-Solution Society“;
• Cathy Clark: “Capital + Ideas + People + Timing = Social Change“;
• Krishna Udayakumar: “The Challenges of Global Health“; and,
• Rachel Lichte: “Seeking Clarity” (Rachel also later won the CASE Seed Prize for her venture, The Clarity Project).

Net Impact Presidents, Abigail & Elana

We ran a multitude of student programs, showcasing the incredible passion and intellect of our students.  We welcomed two new CASE Scholars (Jennifer Fluder and Michelle Kirby), had six fantastic CASE Fellows, and 41 Fuqua on Board Fellows working with 21 local nonprofits.

Our incredible Net Impact Club exceeded expectations again – winning Graduate Chapter of the Year from Net Impact National and putting on a variety of programs and events throughout the year, including “Week in Cities” (a career trek in which students met with representatives from organizations in education, social finance, social sector consulting, and more) and the 8th annual Sustainable Business and Social Impact conference, featuring 400 attendees, 50 speakers and 11 panels.

CASE i3 Fellows & Associates

The CASE Initiative on Impact Investing (CASE i3) launched a new CASE i3 Fellows program with 37 Fellows and associates, programming throughout the year, and multiple projects – including one with 2013 ESI Award winner, Riders for Health.

CASE i3 also launched a new website, taught a session on impact investing in Global Institute (meaning that every Fuqua first year was exposed to impact investing during their first classes at Fuqua), and launched a new Daytime MBA course on impact investing to complement the existing courses on social entrepreneurship.

We continued our efforts in thought leadership, for example:

• Paul Bloom published his fantastic book, Scaling Your Social Venture: Becoming an Impact Entrepreneur.
• Cathy Clark published cutting edge materials in impact investing, including “Accelerating Impact Entrepreneurs: How to Lock, Stock, and Anchor Impact Entrepreneurs for Maximum Impact,” and “A Market Emerges: The Six Dynamics of Impact Investing.”
• Greg Dees continues to offer his insights on the history and trends in social entrepreneurship: “The Past, Present and Future of Social Entrepreneurship” and “Advice for Social Entrepreneurs.”
• Erin Worsham published an interview with Greg Dees: “Reflections and Insights on Teaching Social Entrepreneurship.”

The SEAD Symposium kicks off!

Of course, our year’s recap would not be complete without mentioned of the launch of the Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator at Duke (SEAD).  With a $10 million award from USAID, Duke will identify and support social entrepreneurs who are scaling solutions to global health challenges in low- and middle-income countries.

We welcomed our first cohort of 13 social entrepreneurs (read about them here), held the inaugural Symposium on Scaling Innovations in Global Health, and launched a new website.

And much, much more! None of these accomplishments would have been possible without the amazing CASE team, led by Matt Nash.

It’s been a great year and we’re even more excited for the year to come. View our 10 year anniversary video to learn more about what is to come:

CASE students at graduation

Another year, another set of bittersweet goodbyes as our graduates throw their caps and hold their diplomas in hand.

We send them off in to a world full of challenges that are ever changing and growing in complexity. But also a world that is brimming with innovation and possibilities.  A world that can really use smart, energetic, impact-oriented graduates to help lead the way to a better tomorrow.

We are lucky enough to share deeply in two years of our students’ journeys towards becoming “leaders of consequence.” And we look forward to continuing to be a part of that journey, as they find the place where they want to use their skills and talents to have an impact.

As they go off and begin their careers as leaders, we hope that they never stop growing and learning.  Earlier this year Tom Tierney, co-founder of The Bridgespan Group, came to campus and met with our students.  He had many sage words of advice and so we wanted to leave our graduates with his “three lessons on leadership” from a Huffington Post interview (note: the following quote is edited for length, see the full version in Rahim Kanani’s interview with Tom Tierney):

1)    Aim High, Aim Long: Don’t waste effort on little stuff: aspire to achieve significance. Important results can take years, even decades.  Persistence and unbending commitment matter.

2)    Get Better: If you are not a more effective leader this year than you were last year, then you are failing to truly confront the “Am I getting better?” question. The best leaders develop acute self-awareness, seek constant feedback from multiple sources (especially constructive negative feedback), and build assiduously on their natural strengths.  They never get comfortable; they take risks and learn from the inevitable shortfalls. They are confident, but no matter how accomplished they might be, they always believe that they have a lot to learn.

3)    It’s Not About You: Stay focused on the ultimate beneficiary and on the ends you are striving to achieve.  Recognize others (not yourself); give credit (don’t take it); listen incessantly (you will learn more). We can so easily get trapped in a world where perceptions matter more than reality; where we are supposed to climb some invisible ladder; where we are preoccupied with building our resume more than leading our unique life; where we concern ourselves with our span of control rather than our span of influence.  If it is not about you, if you develop trust and mutual respect with those upon whom you depend, then people will respond to your leadership, they will collaborate and contribute and then you will succeed.

To our graduates – follow your passions, never stop learning, and lead your one and only unique life to the fullest. And, of course, keep in touch – we’ll miss you!

Cathy Clark and Matt Allen of CASE i3, Bonny Moellenbrock of the SJF Institute, and Chinwe Onyeagoro of O-H Community Partners recently released a report, “Accelerating Impact Enterprises: How to Lock, Stock and Anchor Impact Enterprises for Maximum Impact.”

This report explores the “demand” side of the impact investment marketplace – the evolution, potential, and needs of domestic for-profit impact enterprises (IEs) who may be the recipients of impact investment capital.  The report addresses three main questions and recommends that IEs LOCK, STOCK and ANCHOR to accelerate their impact:

1. How has the overall market of impact enterprises evolved over time?

Since an initial national survey of impact enterprises was done by Cathy Clark in 2003, we have seen a significant rise in the number of certifications and commitments – such as certified B Corps and legal forms like Benefit Corporations and L3Cs – that IEs have available to them.  What is truly interesting is that the data shows that the IEs that have pursued these product or company certifications show strong correlation with overall business growth and success. The study’s authors therefore recommend that IEs should LOCK in their mission through certification which resolves ambiguity and correlates with greater business success.

2. What impact enterprise segments have the most potential for impact?

The IEs in the study were mapped by “pace of growth” and “impact commitment,” showing a positive correlation, on average, between high growth and high impact.  This of course varies by industries – e.g., agriculture/food and financial services show higher growth and impact, whereas manufacturing and transportation show a weaker correlation between the two.  It also varies by population served with companies focused on underserved populations showing slower growth on average, regardless of the industry segment. The authors recommend that IEs should take STOCK of the enterprise’s impact targets, as they may influence growth trajectory.

3. What do impact entrepreneurs need to succeed?

The study showed that IEs are most successful when part of a community of practice that may include centers of excellence around common issues in each industry or stage of maturity, or peer networking. And, of course, IEs need access to capital – but the right kinds of capital at the right time in their growth trajectory.  The authors point out that IEs will be most successful when they ANCHOR within strong communities of practice.

Want to learn more about the study and its findings?:

• Download the executive summary or full report (pdfs)
• Watch the Investors’ Circle panel, “Ivory Tower to Muddy Boots: What Does the Latest Research Mean for Entrepreneurs & Investors?” where the report was officially released. (Full panel starts at 22:30. Cathy’s presentation of key findings starts at 49:30. The powerpoint she used is here.)

This post was written by Nicole Hawkins, a rising second year student at Fuqua and a CASE Fellow.

Andrea and Barry Coleman with the CASE team

What do motorcycles, Africa and healthcare have in common?  The 2013 CASE Enterprising Social Innovation (ESI) Award winners, Riders for Health!

Riders is a non-profit organization that manages and maintains motorcycles and vehicles for health-focused partners in sub-Saharan Africa.  Currently operating in seven countries across Africa, Riders is working with ministries of health, various NGOs, private organizations, and religious groups.  Its impact has been huge:

• improved access to healthcare for 12 million people across Africa,
• health workers can see nearly 6 times more people, reaching nearly 4 times further and doubling the time they can spend in communities, and
• 2.9 million extra people interact with health professionals each year.

I had the opportunity to meet Riders co-founders Barry and Andrea Coleman when they were at Fuqua, accepting the ESI award and discussing how they are filling a critical gap by focusing on last mile distribution.  In Andrea’s words, “success is neither magical nor mysterious. Success is a natural consequence of constantly applying the basic fundamentals.” She articulated that without the “basic fundamentals” of getting things to the people that need them, health solutions are not going to have an impact.  Innovative technology solutions are fantastic, but “you cannot do a c-section with a mobile phone” so we need to ensure that health workers and equipment get to patients wherever they are.

The Colemans spoke about some of the challenges that they face, including measuring their impact. It is difficult to draw conclusions about Riders’ impact and causality because they aren’t the ones directly delivering the health outcomes, but are playing a critical intermediary role in enabling health workers to do their work effectively. And the impact goes beyond healthcare.  For instance, in countries where the workforce traditionally only includes men, Riders is not only training women on how to maintain motorcycles and vehicles used in its business, but also giving women jobs.

I have also had the opportunity to work with Riders this past year as part of a consulting project through the CASE i3 Initiative on Impact Investing.  I participated in CASE i3 because I wanted to learn more about the impact investing landscape and international development while putting my business skills to use. My team of four worked with Riders, first to understand the company’s model, and then figured out how to scale their business operations so that they could expand within Africa.  Not only did I learn about impact investing, but I became familiar with healthcare issues in Africa.  Topics such as last mile transportation, road safety, health systems, development bottlenecks, all became very familiar to me as we searched for scaling opportunities.

It was great to meet the Colemans in person and hear more about their goals of expanding Riders.  Throughout our project and during the ESI lecture, Andrea and Barry inspired us to use our skills to help Riders and similar organizations.  Andrea’s advice to the audience was to continually challenge the status quo so that we don’t just leave the world the way it is.  Andrea and Barry have been successful because of that spirit, as well as their focus on scalable impact and sustainable sources of capital.

It was truly inspiring to learn about the Riders for Health story – what started out as a love for motorcycles and has now turned in to an organization that helps to provide critical healthcare to Africans in the hardest to reach rural villages.

View Andrea and Barry’s full talk below:

This post originally appeared on Southern New Hampshire University’s Be a Social Entrepreneur blog. To read the original post, click here.

J. Gregory Dees has been the recipient of the Ashoka and Aspen Institute Lifetime Achievement Award in Social Entrepreneurship and continues to share his knowledge in the classroom and the world.

How did you get started in social entrepreneurship?
I was drawn into social entrepreneurship way back in 1986 when I was teaching at the Yale School of Management. At that time, the school covered business, nonprofit, and government all in one program. I was asked to develop and teach a new course on New Ventures. Naturally, given the scope of the program, I had to include all kinds of new ventures: nonprofits, for-profits, cooperatives, and hybrid structures. The students had to develop business plans, and many of them developed ventures with some kind of social mission in education, health care, the environment or poverty alleviation. This was before the term “social entrepreneurship” was widely embraced, but that is what many of them were doing. I thought it was fascinating. I was gripped by the distinctive challenges of achieving social impact and making the economics work. I was also hooked by the passion of the students.

Did your interest spark from any certain experience related to the field?
My interest pre-dated the course. It went back to my years at McKinsey when I met Dick Cavanagh, a partner in the D.C. office, who introduced me to the work of his good friend Bill Drayton. Bill had worked at McKinsey as one step on his fascinating career path, before creating Ashoka: Innovators for the Public around 1980. Bill is truly the father of this movement, at least in the U.S. (Michael Young was pushing similar ideas in the U.K.). Bill was starting to promote the idea of social entrepreneurship. Dick introduced me to Bill’s work, because he knew I was concerned to find out how we could use our business and management knowledge to find better solutions to social problems. My personal motivation came from seeing many social problems up close and personal as I grew up. Dick was a good mentor. I have followed Bill’s work ever since. It gave me a way of thinking about what some of my students were doing at Yale.

What aspect of social entrepreneurship interests you the most and why?
I am most intrigued by three things: the innovation process, the development of business models to support the innovation, and the process of scaling the impact of successful innovations. How do social entrepreneurs create new ways to tackle social problems—ways that are sufficiently better than what exists to justify switching? How can we help them be more effective at doing that? Clever ideas are a-dime-a-dozen, but truly worthwhile ideas, ones that are worth the costs of adoption, are precious.

When social entrepreneurs have an innovative idea, how do they develop a business model that both provides economic support and is aligned with achieving optimal social impact? Business models can lower the costs of adoption, but if they are not aligned, they can undermine the social impact, even when they are financially sound. We find that social entrepreneurs are constantly tweaking their business models looking for the right balance. It is not easy.

Finally, I am intrigued by the challenge of scaling impact. It is common to ask: How can social entrepreneurs scale their successful innovations? I would reframe the question: How can societies take better advantage of the successful innovations of social entrepreneurs. The onus should not only be on the social entrepreneurs. If their effective innovations do not scale, it is society’s loss. We should be asking what can be done to facilitate this process. How can we harvest the benefits of their work?

What’s the biggest challenge of teaching social entrepreneurship?
There are a couple of challenges I’d like to mention. The first is getting past all the definitional debates. There are many. I have written about the definition of social entrepreneurship (read here), but frankly, I am not too wed to a particular definition. This work should not be about definitions; it should be about action. It should be about crafting worthwhile innovative solutions to social or environmental problems. Yes, we need some boundaries for our courses; so I insist on one. I only include ventures that measure their success by their social impact, and make strategic decisions accordingly. Other organizations do in fact achieve great positive social impact without aiming for it or measuring it, that is terrific, but they do not face the same challenges as those who aim to achieve it, who need to measure it, who want to optimize it.

The other challenge is making sure we (students and faculty) treat the subject rigorously. This is not about feeling good. It is not even about “doing good” in the traditional sense of well-intentioned action. It is not about being cool or politically correct. It is about smart choices for achieving lasting, positive, worthwhile impact on serious problems. It is about using our scarce resources wisely. We have to be willing not just to “speak truth to power,” but we have to “speak hard truth to virtue, passion, and sacrifice,” which can be even harder, but is just as important. Virtue, passion, and sacrifice are not enough. Good intentions and hard work sometimes get it wrong. We have to be able to honor the effort and still say “What you are doing, no matter how well intentioned, is not effective, not a good use of resources.” Rigor is hard when passions are high.

[Editor's note: To learn more about Professor Dees's thoughts on teaching social entrepreneurship, read "Reflections and Insights on Teaching Social Entrepreneurship."]

How did you become involved in the editing of “Enterprising Nonprofits and Strategic Tools for Social Entrepreneurs?”
Those two books were stimulated by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. I had been working with Kauffman on social entrepreneurship, and they decided that the field needed some resources. Initially, these were not designed as textbooks; they were meant for practitioners, particularly in the nonprofit sector, who wanted to be more entrepreneurial. I immediately recruited my friend Jed Emerson. I was teaching at Stanford at the time and Jed was running REDF in San Francisco, just up the road. We then found Peter Economy, a Stanford grad who had written or edited several business books. That created the team. The next step was to design the contents and find chapter authors who would bring a diversity of expertise. It was a fascinating process, with lots of editorial back and forth. Originally we thought all this material might fit into one book, but it was too much, so we created two. I have been pleased to see that the books have had staying power.

What was the inspiration for your new book?
I am currently working on a book about how social entrepreneurship fits in society as a whole and how different players in society can help maximize the benefits we get from the activities of social entrepreneurs. The core question is: How do we create a truly adaptive, entrepreneurial society that is responsive to ever changing and challenging social problems? However, I have to admit, sometimes I think the field may not need another book, but might be better served by something more multi-media—online videos (maybe a course), a website with interactive graphics, and so on. I am playing over the options now. I want to create something that will make a difference. Producing a book just to have another book is not smart. The big question is: How will that book achieve an impact? Whatever I do should always be viewed through that lens.

Have you seen any changes over the past decade in regards to social enterprises? If so, what are they and what do you think caused them?
There have been many changes. Let me mention just two very different ones. One of the changes has been the emergence of new legal forms of organization, such as the Benefit Corporation, the Low-profit, Limited Liability Company (L3C), the Flexible Purpose Corporation, and the Community Interest Company. The first three have been enacted by different states in the United States, and the last one was created in the United Kingdom. These emerged as social entrepreneurs struggled to find the right legal form to combine their social missions and their business models. Somehow traditional nonprofit and corporate legal structures were lacking. Beyond these new legal forms, we have also seen the rise of the “Certified B-Corporation,” B-Corp for short, which is a designation that a company can achieve by meeting certification standards of B Lab. These standards have to do, for instance, with changing the corporate charter to allow management and the board to consider the interests of multiple stakeholders, not just stockholders in making strategic decisions. B-Corp is not a new legal form, but can sometimes be accomplished by amending articles of incorporation within an existing legal structure. However, this was also driven by the desire for greater flexibility to serve social objectives in addition to economic ones.

The second change has been the recognition that often a lone social entrepreneur with an innovation is not enough to spur significant social change. That often requires collaborative action. In many cases, even for an innovation to get widespread acceptance, it needs to be supported by a change in laws, norms, or some system that will open the door for a shift in behavior. Also, many social problems are multi-sided and need to be approached from several different directions at once. If you are trying to promote economic development in a region and you start by improving the educational system, you are likely to simply create lots of outward migration, as educated people leave for jobs elsewhere. Unless you can create jobs locally for the people you educate, that new regional asset will simply leave the region. But bringing in jobs without an educated workforce to fill the jobs is also unlikely to work. So, we are seeing more focus on collaborative impact, network approaches and strategic alliances.

Are you personally involved in any social enterprises?
My only role now is as an advisor and consultant. Formally, I am on the board of the Bridgespan Group, and on several advisory boards, including REDF, Volans, the Limmat Foundation, and Management Leadership for Tomorrow. However, I also informally advise various social entrepreneurs on their ventures, and I work with social entrepreneurs through our programs at Duke. For instance, we are just starting the Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator at Duke (SEAD), which will be initially focused on helping to scale innovations in global health. A cohort of sixteen innovators will start the program this spring, and I expect to work with them closely as this project moves forward.

This post was written by Greg Payne, a second year Duke MBA student as well as a CASE and CASE i3 Fellow.

The overcast sky and 45′F weather in Oxford could not dim the excitement and anticipation of the Impact Investor project’s convening. Held on Wednesday, April 10, 2013, directly prior to the 10^th annual Skoll World Forum, the three-hour interactive session featured preliminary insights from the third phase of the Impact Investor research project (a partnership between CASE, InSight at Pacific Community Ventures, and ImpactAssets) which, when completed, will include a compilation of case studies featuring best practices from impact investing funds around the world.

As the CASE i3 Fellow leading our work on this project, I welcomed nearly 80 session attendees representing the diverse and growing landscape of impact investors and intermediaries — from large philanthropies to small venture funds, banks, and government agencies focusing on issues ranging from sustainability to workforce development to poverty alleviation.

After warm welcomes from co-host Pamela Hartigan of the Skoll Centre at Oxford and project sponsor Vineet Bewtra of Omidyar Network, Cathy Clark of CASE and Ben Thornley of PCV kicked off the discussion with a review of the Impact Investor project’s progress over the past 12 months.  The project’s first two phases concluded with reports identifying the need for an in-depth study of the field and six dynamic tensions that appear to affect impact investing practice. Cathy and Ben then introduced two thought-provoking themes that are emerging from our in-depth research into existing impact investing funds:

1. One concentrated on the differing objectives of limited partners when investing in funds, ranging from “mandate-driven” by policy incentives and “mission-driven” by explicit intent.
2. The other considered how some high performing funds have integrated creative designs that nearly totally mitigate the risks to investors, aligning the fund’s strategy and structure into almost a kind of fund “safety net” for returns.

An expert panel reacted to the themes. Kieron Boyle of the UK Cabinet Office said the role of policy and government in the field is changing in important ways and he feels “both comfort and angst” about that. Ilse Treurnicht of MaRS Discovery District pointed out that we need to be careful that government involvement doesn’t slow this down and that we keep innovation on the table. Alex Nicholls of Oxford University remarked that the theme on safety nets discussed financial risk but that the kinds of social risks and returns funds take and create deserve further delineation. And Mildred Callear of Small Enterprise Assistance Funds responded that it may do a disservice to impact investing to overly manage all risk, and that the potential of the field is to make a spectrum of investments, even those with highest impact potential, investable. She also asked, “Should subsidies be used simply to lower risk or to amplify impact?”

Warmed up for in-depth discussion, the session attendees broke out into six discussion groups, each tasked with identifying key emerging issues in the practice of impact investing. Topics discussed included the challenges related to investing in early-stage ventures; the future of social impact bonds (SIBs); non-traditional fund structures; innovative deal structures; engaging high-net worth investors; and, lessons from community development finance.

As expected when you get some of the most engaged, influential thinkers and practitioners together, each group’s report raised issues that challenged the boundaries of how we think about impact investing, and what we may witness in future evolutions of the field of practice:

• The SIB group, which included David Blood, co-founder of Social Finance in the UK, challenged the room to consider how SIBs could be used as an asset allocation tool for funds and investors to diversify and manage risk.
• The non-traditional fund structures group, reported on by Jennifer Pryce of Calvert Foundation, asked if the field could start to match the financial vehicles better to the outcomes desired, instead of fitting one size fits all fund structures on every goal, or by using different kinds of capital as first loss layers.
• The innovative deal structure group, as reported by Keely Stevenson of Bamboo Finance, discussed hybrid investment structures and asked if new blended debt and equity investment structures aren’t making things even more complicated and unwieldy for entrepreneurs.
• The group exploring ways to engage more high net worth individuals in impact investing, reported by Amy Bell of JP Morgan, decided the field needs a “gateway drug” for investors to taste in order to become more used to the idea of investing for impact.
• And the community development finance group, on their report led by Debra Schwartz of the MacArthur Foundation and Bob Annibale of Citi, kicked off a lively debate on how community development financing, which has been largely driven by both policy “sticks” and philanthropic subsidy, is, in fact, not a highly replicable model for other kinds of impact investing.

Katherine Fulton of Monitor/Deloitte closed the session by posing some thoughts about the landscape emerging now almost 5 years into the 10 year vision of the 2009 Monitor report. She noted that the word “policy” was forbidden in conversations back then, and pondered about how well we have come closer to knowing what can and cannot be accelerated by impact investing dollars and strategies. She also recognized the emergence and experimentation of a much broader set of tools for finance with a social purpose, but cautioned the group to be careful about inflation of expectations.

Oxford is a heady and inspiring place to be each April as the world’s social entrepreneurs converge to consider how to broaden and deepen real social impact.  On behalf of the Impact Investor project team, which will continue its research into emerging best practices in impact investing, we are entirely grateful for the insights and contributions of these field leaders to that pursuit!

This post was written by Maddy Devine, a first year student at Fuqua and one of the track managers for the 2013 SBSI conference.  Read more about the conference in the previous post here.

As one of the track managers of the Net Impact Club’s Sustainable Business & Social Impact conference, I had been tasked with pulling together three panels that encompassed the vast “social impact space.” The task was daunting. I looked to my classmates and fellow Net Impact Cabinet members to source areas of interest for panels and finally arrived upon three, covering education, global health, and community development.

“How is Education Reform Really Happening?” (podcast)

As a former Teach For America Corps Member, I was thrilled to invite speakers with such rich and diverse experiences in education to join us at SBSI. The panel opened with a tough question from our moderator, Executive Director of the Education Pioneers Southern Office and 2009 Fuqua alum John Troy, “What does education reform mean to you?”

Tim Field, a Senior Policy Fellow at Public Impact responded, “Well, reform can mean change which can be either good or bad,” opening up a discussion that challenged both the panelists and audience to think through the many facets of the education reform issue.

Sarah Rosenberg, alum of Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy and Education Analyst at Education Sector, noted that after several years of the “education reform movement,” the country is now hitting the implementation phase – and in doing so realizing the role for policy and the role for schools and innovators.  Elliot Sanchez articulated where he saw the need for entrepreneurship after his experiences on school reform teams with both the Louisiana state department and Superintendent of the Recovery School district in New Orleans. He determined that the policy climate with the Federal Race to the Top program actually favored the entrepreneur and founded mSchool, an accredited, technology-based micro-classroom model. “The challenge,” said Elliot, “is that there has been a change in the way that we interact with information in our daily lives, and this has yet to ripple down to how we prepare our children to function in society.”

Charter schools have often been seen as the innovator’s prime tool to producing better student outcomes, and all panelists chimed in with thoughts on the positives and negatives of charter school management organizations. Tim drew from his experience as the former Deputy Chief in Philadelphia’s Office of Charter, Partnership and New Schools and noted how important it is for districts to be rigorous in their charter review process. Fuqua 2011 alum Chris Tessone, shed light on some of the negative externalities of the school scorecard review process. Chris is COO of DC’s Maya Angelou Public Charter Schools, a network of schools that cater to students who are significantly behind or need special education. Before the schools were certified alternative education, a failing school scorecard did little to indicate the successes of the population they were built to serve. Sarah also brought up an important point in the charter school discussion – what happens if there isn’t the demand to bring in a charter school? As a former TFA teacher in rural Eastern North Carolina, she made the case that there needs to be an innovative solution that fits even that one big high school in a small town.

Last but not least, all chimed in with thoughts on what “magic wand” solutions they most hoped for, and populated a list of innovative solutions for top priority issues that slow reform, including the elective nature of school boards, education, student funding and facilities ownership. The packed audience was riveted by the discussion and by the end I had to kick them out so the final panel could start!

“Is It Scalable? Duke and Global Health” (podcast)

To start the morning, we heard from a diverse set of panelists who are collaborating on the $10M USAID grant that Fuqua was awarded to launch the Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator at Duke (SEAD). In the spirit of SEAD, Fuqua Professor and moderator Paul Bloom posed challenging questions about scaling to our esteemed panelists.

The session featured panelists from many different disciplinary backgrounds. Associate Director for the International Partnership for Innovative Healthcare Delivery (IPIHD) Richard Bartlett gave compelling testimony as to why he believes that social entrepreneurs in global health must strive to scale. Karen Clune, an Innovation Advisor for USAID, provided the Agency’s insight as to who has effectively scaled and been successful in the international health space. With a background in medical device engineering, Bob Malkin, Professor and Director of Engineering World Health at Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering, brought the discussion to life with tangible examples about the different needs for the different considerations for medical device design for use in developing countries. And last, but certainly not least, Fuqua Professor Cathy Clark hit upon one of the key challenges faced as she discussed the role of impact investing in scaling social enterprises. The panel’s diversity shed light on both the complexity of solving global health problems, but the need for people from different disciplines to work together to scale approaches that do work.

“A Lesson in Community Redevelopment: Durham as a Case Study” (podcast)

“We thought Durham needed to get its swagger back.”

“Thanks for bringing it.”

The crowd erupted in laughter as Farad Ali thanked his longtime friend and colleague Michael Goodmon in what was a boisterous and entertaining conclusion to an inspiring set of panel topics. What better way to end a day than to have four business, government and non-profit leaders from the local Durham community speak about the collaborative nature of community investment? Durham County Government’s Deputy County Manager Lee Worsley moderated the all-star panel which sat Durham philanthropist and businessman Michael Goodmon, Vice President of Real Estate for Capitol Broadcasting Company (CBC); the Director of Durham County’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development Kevin Dick; Executive Vice President of Self-Help, Tucker Bartlett; and Vice President of the Institute of Minority Economic Development Farad Ali.

When American Tobacco closed in August of 1987, there were 2000 employees who were severely impacted. “When these industrial-type facilities close around the country, these people aren’t losing their jobs. These people are losing their lives,” said Michael. He told the story of Durham’s decline and how, for years, downtown Durham was abandoned, riddled with crime, and down on itself. “We even had a ‘Durham: Love yourself’ campaign,” added Tucker.

The reinvestment in downtown Durham started with Michael and the CBC real estate team looking at the abandoned American Tobacco facilities. “Those facilities offered a great opportunity to not only change the asset we have but the perception of what Durham really is.”

Then unfolds the story of how government, business and non-profits worked together to rebuild a town that spurs entrepreneurship, particularly for minority and women-owned enterprises, attracts business, creates jobs, reduces poverty and increases opportunities for Durham’s children. By the end of the day, the audience learned more about Durham, the spirit of collaboration, and the leaders themselves. While their fraternal warmth and humor may have stuck with me about the hour and a half we spent together, it was their ten and counting years of collaboration that has made an impressive and lasting impact on Durham.

Reflecting on the initial investment of CBC into American Tobacco I remember Michael’s words and am renewed in my personal definition of socially responsible business, “[American Tobacco] has never been about a great financial opportunity; it’s been about the community. Since when has business been about your tax burden?”

Want to learn more about the 2013 SBSI conference? Links to videos and podcasts of the sessions are posted on the Net Impact Club website: https://fuqua.campusgroups.com/netimpact/media-from-sbsi/

This post was written by Kirsten Hagfors, one of this year’s conference co-directors. Kirsten will soon graduate from Duke with a joint MBA/MEM (Master of Environmental Management) degree.

This past February the Duke MBA Net Impact Club held its signature event: The Duke Conference on Sustainable Business and Social Impact (SBSI). 400 people came together to think outside of traditional business roles and brainstorm what it means to have a mission that is “Beyond the Bottom Line.”

SBSI occurred during Fuqua’s Green Week, a week dedicated to promoting sustainability, so the conference had even more incentive to embrace sustainable and waste-reducing initiatives. Thanks to donations of Counter Culture Coffee and Rainforest Alliance Certified Lipton Teas, the audience was energized to start the day. Most of our attendees downloaded the conference program as a free mobile application through Guidebook, who donated this electronic, paper-saving feature to the event.

Fifty speakers across four tracks (Sustainability, Finance, Social and Technology) contributed their time and insights to the 8^th year of this conference, which took place at The Fuqua School of Business. Daytime MBA Dean, Russ Morgan, opened the event with supportive words about the importance of this conference and the value of “Beyond the Bottom Line” thinking (video). Daniel Norber and Kirsten Hagfors, Conference Co-Chairs, welcomed the audience and explained the TED-style keynotes.

Those keynotes started with Nikki Rodoni, Director of Sustainability at Gills Onions. She shared the huge scale at which Gills operates (300,000 pounds of onion waste every day!) and the importance of integrating sustainability and social responsibility into the company’s values. (video)

Next up was Nino Fanlo, Chief Financial Officer at SoFi. The statistics that he presented about default rates on school loans (Duke students are at less than 0.5%) demonstrated the need for a solution that is not “One Size Fits All.” By connecting students with alumni and establishing relationships and mentoring opportunities, SoFi is finding ways to alleviate the challenges that students face when financing their education. (video)

11 panels and lunch networking sessions gave attendees the opportunity to pick a path that interested them, but Kirsten’s advice to “go outside your comfort zone” was taken to heart by guests who attended sessions outside of their professional scope.

Coming back together in the afternoon, Dan Vermeer, Executive Director of the Center of Energy, Development and the Global Environment (EDGE), spoke about the importance of partnerships between students, administration, faculty and professionals to leverage expertise to innovate and advance.

SBSI closed with two final keynotes. The first was delivered by Elliot Sanchez, Founder of mSchool. Elliot inspired the crowd to think about creative approaches to education. His passion about offering students individual paths towards learning through technology was absolutely infectious. (video)

Will Patrick, Rapid Evaluator at Google[x], left the audience expecting the unexpected after his presentation on Moonshot Thinking. Google glass, self-driving vehicles, space elevators: anything is possible with a motivated team of people committed to the task at hand. (video)

Thank you to everyone who made this day possible.  We truly launched “Beyond the Bottom Line,” and we can’t wait to see where we land at next year’s SBSI Conference!

Want to learn more about the 2013 SBSI conference?

• Links to videos and podcasts of the sessions are posted on the Net Impact Club website: https://fuqua.campusgroups.com/netimpact/media-from-sbsi/
• A post from first year student Maddy Devine, “Education, Global Health, & Community Development at SBSI 13”
• Another post from first year student Jen McFann about her experience helping organize the conference, “Fuqua Clout Supports Sustainability Conference.”