GreenLight Fund’s Post

Our friends at LendForGood have joined forces with The Wellbeing Protocol to bring their work to  SXSW Sydney later this year and we want your help to vote it into reality. The session on ‘Reimagining community funding with tech’ will see Mark Pascall, The Wellbeing Protocol and Cameron Neil, the founder of LendForGood and Red Hat Impact, discuss how technology can be used to build better ways to fund impact outcomes around the world. If this is a session you’d like to see at SXSW we would love it if you could support the submission by voting. It should only take a few minutes. Here's how you vote: 1. Go here: https://lnkd.in/g3KAG-9H you will have to register but can decline marketing. 2. Put ‘Community funding’ in the search field and our submission should pop up. (If it does not the full title is below) 3. Click on ‘Vote’ If you have the time to share this post, or tag anyone here who this might also resonate with we’d be very grateful. #demandled #adaptivecapital #techforgood #impactinvesting

In the second half of 2023, Praxis Mutual Funds® participated in $1.64 million of new community development investments and $55 million of positive impact bond purchases. Learn about our impact investments made through our partners at Calvert Impact and Capital Impact Partners and how investing in Praxis makes a real difference: https://lnkd.in/egGdKK62 #RealImpact #CommunityDevelopmentInvesting #PositiveImpactBonds

Andrea Levere and Alexandra Sing are the driving force of Capitalize Good. Together, they are advancing multiple initiatives to demonstrate the impact of Enterprise Capital, while aligning both funders and nonprofits to build the infrastructure, awareness, and commitment necessary to bring Enterprise Capital to scale. Become a Capitalize Good partner and help to transform the social sector: capitalizegood.org 

“The call for greater transparency is nothing new. However, the exponential rate of improvement in technology tools is increasing the value of transparency for effectiveness with each passing day. Simultaneously, the rising mistrust in our society is increasing the importance of transparency for public accountability. If you share our sense of opportunity and urgency, we encourage you to join us.” The Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Nathan Cummings Foundation are the founding investors of a new Transparency Working Group within Confluence Philanthropy interested in transparency for a simple purpose: to do our craft better and provide evidence of the value of our efforts. https://lnkd.in/gfAHtRB6

Interesting tool and will be fun to see where it takes us in the reduction of administrative burden, as well as maybe new ways to think about “impact.” I’ve seen a lot of orgs working in public benefits access, including some of the new tech tools, simply count the $ value of benefits they help people access. Can be a little bit misleading because our tax dollars flow into systems that are also set up to help people access the same benefits. So sometimes we double count. On the other hand, it’s much more difficult to quantify administrative burden reduction in terms of client stress reduction, freed up time and opportunity cost, and other benefits that result from critical helping hands guiding people through frustrating paperwork and eligibility processes. New tech, legal aid and many others make a huge impact here that we don’t appreciate enough. Thanks to Max Ghenis for sharing this exciting news.

#CaseStudy 👉 Our Role Samuel S. Fels Fund was at a critical inflection point to define and fully embody social change grantmaking through their values and practices. CBV facilitated sessions to support Fels Fund staff in defining social change and other critical terms, and grantmaking values and practices; and, confronting previous practices. We used data from grantee surveys and documentation review to guide session discussions. Prior to each session, Fels Fund staff received pre-work to reflect on key topics.   CBV also provided virtual listening opportunities that centered around Brave Space Building™ to help Fels grantees share their truth and provide vital information that supports organizational reconciliation. For those grantees that could not attend, we created and distributed a survey to get information on their experience and recommendations on creating a social change centered grantmaking process and the types of support that they need to sustain their work. ✨ The Difference Fels Fund received an embodied experience that helped them define a new transformational culture to fully live their values. They now have a community of practice to slow down and process, which has made way for imagination and dreaming to center social justice and racial equity. In addition, Fels Fund was able to redefine its grantmaking strategy that centers racial equity and social justice. #racialequity #socialjustice #trustbasedphilanthropy

A new impact profile on Moody's was recently published in Social Impact World’s Impact Vault. One of the things that stood out while researching the company was its Community Giving program, which uniquely empowers its employee-led regional advisory councils. These councils, led by business resource group (BRG) co-chairs, have the authority to decide how funds in the company’s foundation should be allocated to address pressing community needs. This is the first time I’ve encountered a program that grants this level of "power" to its employees (I'm sure there are some guardrails). And it makes sense. Similar to how nonprofits have more insight into societal problems and solutions than corporations, employees have the most insight into their own communities' challenges and the organizations worth supporting, unlike their employers who may not have a significant local presence. All that to say, if you want to accelerate your impact as a corporation, lean on the expertise of people and organizations with firsthand experience.

Just learned about this social outcomes marketplace at an SSIR webinar. If/when it works, it'll provide a whole new (more effective, efficient, transparent) way for nonprofits and social enterprises to get paid for their social impact. Check it out, Annika Voltan, Daniel Holland, Shaun Loney, Chelsey MacNeil, Lisa Lowthers, David LePage

👉 From our #MissionInvest2024 partnership with ImpactAlpha: Zoila Jennings of RWJF dives into how the foundation is changing the systems and policies that affect how capital flows through communities: "Rather than helping just one neighborhood, one ZIP code, or one community thrive, impact investors can invest in the whole system of community development with the added aim of eradicating systemic racism in the capital markets." 📰 Read more: https://lnkd.in/euWEB87y

Excited to see The Bridgespan Group leaning into the difficulty, messiness, and deep importance of understanding impact as a collaborative fund. There are no easy answers in this domain and we all (funders, funds, and grantees) need to get comfortable with the discomfort of not always being able to measure things as cleanly as we would like. At Liberation Ventures, we're co-creating a 10-year grantmaking strategy with movement leaders and weighing different ways to measure impact over that time. My favorite advice so far has been from Mark Kramer, who told us our most important metric should be the increasing momentum of the field. There are many ways to think about momentum - financial, social, political. What KPIs would you suggest? Who do you know that is doing this well? https://lnkd.in/ed7Vuynp