Social Capital Markets 2008: "Money and Meaning"

In less than a week, more than 500 investors, entrepreneurs, consultants, academics, wealth managers and other actors investing capital, energy, and ideas into creating the so-called "social capital market" that sits at the intersection of the business and nonprofit world will converge upon San Francisco.

The underlying theme of this blog is that there the vibrant experimentation within the social change space in which entrepreneurs are crafting socially-focused organizations that draw upon best practices of the public and private spheres to create fundamental changes to structural challenges. The Social Capital Markets conference is working to bring together the full range of actors who are breaking down the individual silos of corporate social responsibility, sustainable development, social enterprise, and social investing to grow this emerging ecosystem as a coherent whole.

Here at socialentrepreneurship.change.org, we'll be using the occaision of SoCap to explore the themes driving this space, including the challenges of old legal definitions of non-profit vs. for-profit organizations, the new opportunities to integrate "bottom of the pyramid" consumers into the global marketplace, shifting consumption habits in the rich world, and of course, the difficult funding gap faced by social enterprises ready to scale their models.

In the next few days, you'll begin to see short profiles of some of the entrepreneurs driving these changes. I'll also be live blogging the event, with the help of a number of guests. Let us know which events you most want covered and please leave us comments, questions, critiques and ideas so that you can be part of this important conversation.