Skip to main content

Home/ Social Finance/ Group items tagged line

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Nabeel Ahmed

Explaining the Long-term Single Bottom Line (June 24, 2011) | Opinion Blog | Stanford S... - 0 views

www.ssireview.org/...e_long-term_single_bottom_line

Long-term single bottom line blended value

shared by Nabeel Ahmed on 04 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • As the United Nations Global Compact and other development organizations have recognized, big companies can play a pivotal role in raising living standards around the world. Given that their largest shareholders often expect these companies to generate the highest possible rates of return, what’s the best way for them to benefit society as well? Our new working paper offers an answer that may seem counterintuitive at first: Publicly owned companies will be most effective in creating social benefit when they 1) plan for a long time horizon and 2) focus on a single bottom line. The long time horizon is the key here, since several years may pass before the effects of social initiatives feed back into profits. But we’ve found that they do feed back in so many important ways that profit-maximizing companies have an obligation to take investments in social initiatives seriously.
  • One might also argue that double- and triple-bottom lines help to promote transparency and accountability for social benefits, especially in emerging economies. Yet investments that satisfy double- and triple-bottom lines in the short term may not be built for long-term sustainability. Moreover, evaluating and reporting social investments with the same criteria as other investments offers a kind of transparency that we think shareholders will value in any economy.  For most large public companies, we believe that targeting the long-term single bottom line offers clear benefits for executives, shareholders, and, most importantly, for society as a whole.
Tim Draimin

Social Impact Bonds: A New Vehicle to Drive Health Care Reform? : Spencer Healthcare St... - 0 views

www.shstrategists.com/...le-to-drive-health-care-reform

social impact bonds social finance health care

shared by Tim Draimin on 31 May 11 - No Cached
  • social impact bonds hold promise, especially in health care. Right now, all eyes are focused on accountable care organizations and the Medicare Shared Savings Program. Probably the biggest obstacle to the program's success is the high cost of forming ACOs, with many organizations dismissing ACOs out of hand due to the lack of available capital. If, however, we inserted another party into the equation - the private investor to whom the government would agree to share cost savings - that investor would become the source of much-needed capital. The chance of success improves dramatically, but at absolutely no cost or increased risk to the government.
  • As proposed, the Medicare Shared Savings Program permits non-providers to hold up to a 25 percent interest in an ACO, thus allowing private investors in on the game. The shared savings payments, if any, still would go to the ACO, and it would be up to the ACO's governing body to determine allocation among participants, including investors. Under the social impact bond model, however, the full payment would go to the investor, creating a greater incentive for the investor to provide necessary capital.
  • Social impact bonds could help drive health reform by lining up incentives and providing necessary resources while reducing government spending care and improving overall health. While the concept is new and relatively untested in health care (but has demonstrated success in other areas), we need to explore whether there are investors who would value an opportunity to drive health care reform. With CMS soliciting comments on the proposed Advanced Payment Initiative - under which CMS would make advances on shared savings payments to ACOs to cover development costs - it makes sense to consider private investors as the source of such funding at the same time.  
Tim Draimin

Honor the Stanford mission, be of value to society, urges Reich - 1 views

news.stanford.edu/...lassday-talk-reich-061111.html

social economy hybrid organizations social value

shared by Tim Draimin on 13 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • Honor the Stanford mission, be of value to society, urges Reich
  • Rob Reich, associate professor of political science, exhorted members of the Class of 2011 to use their education not just for personal gain but also to better society.
  • Reich is an associate professor of political science, faculty director of the Program in Ethics in Society and co-director of the university's Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • The new social economy Segueing into his lecture, "The Promise and Peril of the New Social Economy," Reich promptly informed his audience that his talk would not be about Facebook or Twitter or other social media.
  • "Same name, different guy," he said. "For the political junkies among you, you will know what I mean when I say that while I am lesser in stature, I am greater in height."
  • After a short performance by the a cappella group Everyday People, some welcoming remarks by Howard Wolf, president of the alumni association, and an introduction by Provost John Etchemendy, Reich stepped to the lectern. He prefaced his lecture by offering his apology to anyone who thought they were going to hear a talk by "the other" Robert Reich, the diminutive Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration.
  • "The exciting fact about the world that you graduates are about to enter is that there are many novel and innovative ways for people to do good." Rattling off some of the buzzwords associated with the new approaches, such as "impact investing," "venture capitalism" and "social return on investment," Reich acknowledged the enormous innovation and ferment that has been taking place. "This innovation brings along with it great promise," he said, "but also, I hope to show you, some real peril." Historically, he said, a flourishing democratic society is composed of three distinct sectors: the business or for-profit sector; the government or public sector; and the social or nonprofit and philanthropic sector, this last constituting the social economy.
  • "By 'new social economy,' I mean the broad new landscape of organizations that seek to produce social benefits," he said.
  • Blurring the lines But innovations of the past 20 years have broadened the social economy far beyond the world of nonprofit organizations and foundations, and the new social economy is full of hybrid organizations and philosophies.
  • In the for-profit sector there have been innovations such as "corporate social responsibility," in which corporations assume responsibility for the social impact of their actions.
  • And there is socially responsible investing, in which investment funds avoid industries embroiled in moral controversy, such as tobacco companies, or purposely invest in companies that produce social returns. Such funds barely existed 15 years ago, but now constitute more than 10 percent of professionally managed investment funds. There are nonprofit organizations that seek to create operations that earn revenue in addition to accepting donations, and "philanthrocapitalism," as The Economist dubbed it, in which philanthropists purposely employ business strategies in their grant-making efforts.
  • Government also acting
  • Even government is getting into the act, Reich said, with the creation of the White House Office of Social Innovation, which seeks to create new types of partnerships between government and the private sector, and between government and the public sector. The "Investing in Innovation Fund" of the Department of Education involved 12 foundations, including the Gates and Hewlett foundations, which contributed $500 million to the department to unlock $650 million in federal funds. "Now there's a genuinely novel idea," Reich said. "Foundations making grants to the federal government." Because of this blurring of boundaries between the traditional three sectors, the new social economy offers today's graduates a host of choices in "doing good." "If you aim to do good and pursue a social cause, you can be sector agnostic: It doesn't matter what sector – public, private, civil society – one enters," he said. "That is an amazing new world and quite possibly a brave new world."
  • Will it work? But innovation can also be perilous, as there is no guarantee that all innovations lead to positive social change, Reich pointed out. Hybrid organizations like social enterprises might seem great in theory, but in practice they must cope with a deep tension between the profit impulse and the social mission impulse. "Will profit overwhelm principle?" he asked. Reich said the 20th-century regulatory framework governing the old three-sector society will eventually prove inadequate for the cross-sector collaborations that are increasingly popular in the 21st. So, he queried, what does this brave new social economy mean for those about to graduate from Stanford? Citing the purpose of the university as set forth by Jane and Leland Stanford, "to promote the public welfare by exercising an influence in behalf of humanity and civilization," Reich called it "a beautiful, honorable and worthy mission." "As you commence the next stages of your life, remember this: Your education here has not been frivolous," Reich said. "It has qualified you for personal success, yes. But – not to put too much pressure on you – we adults are counting on you to solve the global financial crisis, to figure out the war on terror and to come up with the governance structure of the new social economy."
  • adamspence on 13 Jun 11
     
    Rob Reich, associate professor of political science, exhorted members of the Class of 2011 to use their education not just for personal gain but also to better society.
  • Tim Draimin on 14 Jun 11
     
    Commencement address on the expanding
1 - 3 of 3
Showing 20▼ items per page