Leverage for good : an introduction to the new frontiers of philanthropy and social investment / Lester M. Salamon.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

With the resources of both governments and traditional philanthropy barely growing or in decline, yet the problems of poverty, ill-health, and environmental degradation ballooning daily, new models for financing social and environmental objectives are urgently needed. Fortunately, a revolution is underway in the instruments and institutions available to meet this need. Loans, loan guarantees, private equity, barter arrangements, social stock exchanges, bonds, social secondary markets, and investment funds are just some of the actors and tools occupying the new frontiers of philanthropy and social investment. Together they hold the promise of leveraging for social and environmental purposes not just the billions of dollars of charitable grants but the hundreds of billions, indeed trillions, of dollars of private investment capital.While the changes under way are inspiring, they remain largely uncharted. This concise introduction to the topic, and its companion volume, provide the first comprehensive and accessible roadmap to these important advances. In the process, these works will better equip investors, philanthropists, social entrepreneurs, nonprofit leaders, business executives, government officials, and students the world over to capture the opportunities that these developments hold out to them and to our world.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

This work is a companion volume of New Frontiers of Philanthropy (2014), a collection of readings in philanthropy and social investment that Salamon (Director, Center for Civil Society Studies, Johns Hopkins Univ.) edited. This new volume is a modestly expanded version of the introduction to that work. That said, Leverage for Good stands on its own as a useful overview of topics that New Frontiers covers in depth. Salamon outlines contemporary philanthropy's new actors (capital aggregators, secondary markets, social stock exchanges, foundations acting as philanthropic banks, quasi-public investment funds, enterprise brokers, capacity builders, online portals and exchanges, corporate-originated charitable funds, conversion foundations, and funding collaboratives) and new tools (loans and credit enhancements, fixed-income securities, securitization, equity and quasi-equity, social impact bonds, microinsurance, socially responsible investing and purchasing, and grants, prizes and crowd-sourcing). The work also includes explanations of the supply and demand reasons for the appearance of these actors and tools now in particular, discussions of the obstacles that stand in the way of philanthropic and social investment success, and proposals for what can be done to overcome these obstacles. All in all, this concise introduction provides a comprehensive and accessible roadmap to important advances in the areas of philanthropy and social investment. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through professionals and practitioners. --Robert Scott Rycroft, University of Mary Washington