Friday 24 May 2013

Degrees of charity; social finance is best?



As I was burrowing my way through learned texts, I came across the Jewish "8 degrees of charity". This is drawn from the Mishneh Torah of 1178.

It rates the importance of charitable actions ranging from the most selfish - charity given ostentatiously so people can see how wonderful you are to no8, what is seen as the top most important charitable action. This is:

“Helping a needy person become self supporting by a gift, loan or entering into partnership with or promoting work for him or her".

What a great thought from the 12th century backing our 21st century notions of social finance.

The G8 meeting in June is having social finance as one of the themes of the meeting. And later in July a group of social finance experts from and practitioners from across the Globe will be debating the issue.

Called the “Policy Innovation in Impact Investing 2013 Conference” it will mark the 3rd annual meeting of the Impact Investing Policy Collaborative. It comes at an exciting time in the development of the global impact investing field. As many governments around the world look for ways to leverage private capital for public good, this is supposed to be an opportunity to share best practices and approaches to innovation in policy making.

The UK has much to offer to this discussion having spearheaded many of the world’s firsts in the field, such as the Social Investment Business, Big Society Capital and social impact bonds, reforms on outcome-based commissioning and the Social Value Act.

During the conference the IIPC is aiming to develop and formally launch a set of foundational principles for policy design in impact investing. It will be known as "The London Principles", no less!

These principles will provide a touchstone for policymakers across the world to bolster impact investing, offering entry points into a large body of global research and practice.

Policy Innovation for Impact Investing will be July 10/11th. I shall be there. Look out for my Blogs!

And finally, a nice shot of the wisteria in Church St, Charlbury!


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