Values and Value: The Boston Impact Initiative
In a local context, you understand the impact that your money is having in a much tighter feedback loop. — Lindsay Smalling, CEO of Social Capital Markets (SOCAP)
In Season 2 Episode 4 of The Move Podcast, hosts Ceasar McDowell and Ayushi Roy meet Lindsay Smalling, CEO of Social Capital Markets (SOCAP). Through SOCAP, Smalling seeks to leverage the impact of private capital investment beyond the economics.
Understanding how money and markets shape civic spaces for good is key to SOCAP’s goals and vision. This “feedback loop,” or the link between private capital investment and its effects on our social and ecological environments, is critical in the shaping of communities.
To this end, SOCAP also provides diverse platforms — including an annual conference and local satellite events — for investors, non profits, governments, and social entrepreneurs to connect and work towards a more equitable economy and democracy.
In the Boston area, one organization that is engaged in this work is the Boston Impact Initiative (BII). BII invests in businesses and enterprises throughout Eastern Massachusetts focused on addressing pressing social and ecological challenges across the region.
In service of this mission, BII works to create a “robust ecosystem of support” for low income entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs of color to access the capital, relationships, and support that they need in order to grow their businesses and to build local wealth.
BII has grown a strong and diverse portfolio of local enterprises since its inception. For example, BII has supported Cero, a worker-owned cooperative that picks up waste from local businesses, with the goal of reclaiming waste and reducing how much of it ends up in landfills and incinerators. Cero illustrates the link between investment and environment: they help reduce local waste both creates a healthier environment and local employment.
Other enterprises in BII’s portfolio include Commonwealth Kitchen, which provides kitchen space and technical assistance to largely women and minority owned food businesses; Somerville Community Corporation, a community development and affordable housing organization for low income residents of Somerville, MA; and Quality Interactions, which provides cultural competency training for health care professionals in order to improve health outcomes.
In making its investments, BII works to promote and communicate its investment strategies through collaboration with financial, legal, and partner institutions. As Ceasar notes in the podcast, such transparency in investment decisions is of great importance, given the influence and power of private capital on communities, civic spaces, and the strength of our democracy.
Specifically, BII states three criteria that guide its investments in local enterprises: community resilience, economic justice, and enterprise health. By considering both internal structure and impact, these values center investments and business growth in support of just, vibrant, and diverse local economies.Ultimately, BII hopes to model how these values can “become the foundation of new standards for business” that can address social, economic, and racial inequalities.
BII also works to shift the broader landscape of economic opportunity in the Boston area by participating in field-building initiatives with the Boston Ujima Project and the Solidarity Economy Initiative, both of whom work on the ground to “democratize investment, strengthen relationships and build solidarity” in a more just local economy.
These organizations share a common conviction that a financial investment is never anything less than its dollar sum, but in reality, represents and creates so much more. Understanding the link between financial investment, community, and environment, then, is critical to ensuring that today’s investments yield an equitable improvement on the past.
