This inaugural State of Social Finance report is notable for the remarkably collaborative production, involving more than forty ecosystem researchers, community cartographers, and author-practitioners; for the vibrant diversity of approaches across the social finance landscape they chronicle; and third, the “living” state of the project. The report, database, and interactive mapping platform will all serve as open-source tools for broadening and deepening our understanding of the role of social finance in attracting, deploying, and multiplying capital for positive change.

The report is written from the perspective of social finance fund managers themselves.  While recognizing important legacies of dispossession and persisting challenges of exclusion, it emphasizes an asset analysis overall, focusing on the transformative power of social finance to effect positive change in how capital is mobilized for greater economic equity, social justice, and environmental sustainability.  The overarching message is one of a robust current infrastructure, poised and eager to support a quantum leap forward for the social economy.