This book examines funding platforms for impact investing known as social stock exchanges (SSE) and ways to approach impact investing at regulated traditional exchanges. The book analyses the antecedents and prerequisites for the successful implementation of SSEs. It presents the creation of SSEs as a necessary step towards a more democratic and popular impact investing market, and a way to align the asset search process for investors with capital access for entrepreneurs. It also analyses the installation of impact investing at traditional stock exchanges drawing from Green Bonds and Social Bonds. The book showcases successful financial structuring, integrating impact into existing financial products. It discusses standalone impact solutions, the status quo of impact investing, social entrepreneurship and the pros and cons of platforms versus the use of traditional stock exchanges for impact investing. It highlights aspects of adjusted portfolio and product structuring, innovation in the context of listing criteria and makes proposals for impact stock listings at platforms and traditional stock exchanges.

This account of the sophisticated financial hub that was 17th-century Amsterdam “does a fine job of bringing history to life” (Library Journal). The launch of the Dutch East India Company in 1602 initiated Amsterdam’s transformation from a regional market town into a dominant financial center. The Company introduced easily transferable shares, and within days buyers had begun to trade them. Soon the public was engaging in a variety of complex transactions, including forwards, futures, options, and bear raids, and by 1680 the techniques deployed in the Amsterdam market were as sophisticated as any we practice today. Lodewijk Petram’s award-winning history demystifies financial instruments by linking today’s products to yesterday’s innovations, tying the market’s operation to the behavior of individuals and the workings of the world around them. Traveling back in time, Petram visits the harbor and other places where merchants met to strike deals. He bears witness to the goings-on at a notary’s office and sits in on the consequential proceedings of a courtroom. He describes in detail the main players, investors, shady characters, speculators, and domestic servants and other ordinary folk, who all played a role in the development of the market and its crises. His history clarifies concerns that investors still struggle with today—such as fraud, the value of information, trust and the place of honor, managing diverging expectations, and balancing risk—and does so in a way that is vivid, relatable, and critical to understanding our contemporary world.

This report provides a framework for assessing the social impact investment market and focuses on the need to build the evidence base, in particular for impact assessment compared to existing social service delivery models.

The resources of both governments and traditional philanthropy are either barely growing or in decline, yet the problems of poverty, ill-health, and environmental degradation balloon daily. It is therefore increasingly clear that we urgently need new models for financing and promoting social and environmental objectives. Fortunately, a significant revolution appears to be underway on the frontiers of philanthropy and social investing, tapping not only philanthropy, but also private investment capital, and providing at least a partial response to this dilemma. This book examines the new actors and new tools that form the heart of this revolution, and shows how they are reshaping the way we go about supporting solutions to social and environmental problems throughout the world. With contributions from leading experts in the field, New Frontiers of Philanthropy provides a comprehensive analysis of the many new institutions that have surfaced on this new frontier of philanthropy and social investment; the new tools and instruments these institutions are bringing to bear; the challenges that these actors and tools still encounter; and the steps that are needed to maximize their impact. The result is a powerful and accessible guide to developments that are already bringing significant new resources into efforts to solve the world's problems of poverty, ill-health, and environmental degradation; unleashing new energies and new sources of ingenuity for social and environmental problem-solving; and generating new hope in an otherwise dismal scenario of lagging resources and resolve. Investors, philanthropists, social entrepreneurs, nonprofit leaders, business executives, government officials, and students the world over will find much to build on in these pages.

Green and Social Economy Finance is a compilation of chapters by experts, linking research and practice. This anthology provides a new thinking on social economy green finance, showing emerging themes and trends. It spans from stock markets, green finance, innovations, digitalization to social finance, governance and theories of change. It concentrates on impact, opportunity recognition and development of financial products designed to finance the green and social economy. Without the attraction of capital, social entrepreneurship, and innovations, green finance can face difficulty in addressing business solutions. Green and social economy is a nascent field. The authors address the conceptualization of green and social solutions and identify new trends in the finance industry products and approaches. The book demonstrates that aligning finance and investment with the Paris Agreement, sustainable development goals and needs and interests of society are feasible.