Quality of life across the world is improving, but tolerance, personal safety and inclusion are declining, says this year’s 2017 Social Progress Index (or SPI), an annual score that compares 128 countries using various key indicators in the areas of basic human needs, well-being and opportunities for advancement.
Is It a Happiness Index?
What the SPI Is
“The SPI is designed so that ordinary citizens can get a very quick read on how well or poorly their countries are performing in areas that matter to them: health care, education, rights,” says Sally Osberg, President and CEO of the Skoll Foundation.
“The tool can also provoke citizens to demand accountability from the decision-makers responsible for strengthening institutions they care about.”
Notable Trends
While there is a strong correlation between GDP per capita and SPI, economic development and social progress is not exactly linear. Among G20 nations, SPI scores are flatlining. The reports attribute the flatlining trend to “increasing social inequity arising from the concentration of wealth and power into fewer hands, a greater divide between the very rich and the very poor, and a stagnating middle class.”
How Countries Ranked
Social Progress Ranking by Country. Source: Social Progress Index 2017
Northern European countries Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Norway topped the rankings. Yemen, Guinea and Afghanistan were among the lowest countries ranked.
The United States came in at #18 behind Spain and Japan, but ahead of France and Portugal.
A small group of 15 countries, mainly in Central America or sub-Saharan Africa, declined in their overall score. Hungary stood out with the largest decline among European countries, driven largely by changes in tolerance and inclusion.
Michael Green: What the Social Progress Index can reveal about your country. Click or Tap to Watch the Video. Source: TED Talks
Southeast Asia's most challenging SDG is the footprint or the impact of human activity on its land and water areas. Source: Asian Venture Philanthropy Network
The Asian Venture Philanthropy Network (AVPN) conference in Bangkok, Thailand this month in June saw several hundred attendees huddle over three days to get a sense of the social investment opportunities in Asia.
One key takeaway from the event is the need for the region to march its social economies and SDG scores in lockstep with its noteworthy economic growth in past decades.
During the conference, two reports by AVPN evidenced the need – one covering north and south Asia (China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea and Taiwan) and the other covering southeast Asia (Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam).
Who Scored High Vs Low
How Countries in the Region Scored
Singapore, India and South Korea have the most mature social economies while Taiwan, Vietnam and Cambodia have the most opportunities to improve. For a country to have a “mature” social economy, AVPN says, a number of “actors” must be in play in its social ecosystem – government, social investors, social ventures and intermediaries.
Asia SDG Goal Dashboard. South Korea topped the charts. Source: Asian Venture Philanthropy Network
Southeast Asia’s most challenging SDG is the footprint or the impact of human activity on its land areas. A dashboard of the report – a sea of red scores – notes that environmental issues are numerous – climate risk, natural resources management, sustainable management of its forests, management of energy access and infrastructure.
Government involvement varies widely across the region. A number of organizations suffer formal state or legal entity recognition and thus find it very difficult to attract investment. Instead, intermediaries have been taking up government’s mantle whether those activities have involved partnerships, incubations or collaborations.
One bright spot – South Korea is the only east Asian country that legally recognizes social enterprises. The country offers a number of useful incentives including payroll subsidies, sales channel partnerships and preferential procurement from social enterprises.
South Korea is also among advanced Asian economies like Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore that are starting to practice ESG when making investment decisions, and paving the way for practicing responsible investments, making more types of investments more mainstream.
Some of the vehicles that are emerging include ESG bonds, socially responsible exchange traded funds (ETFs), corporate sustainability indices and green bonds.
Wealth Changing Hands
Social economies aside, the Asian region remains a substantial magnet for wealth management.
Linsly Donnelly's SmartFeed makes navigating the world of digital media a whole lot easier for parents, offering better control over what their kids watch, play and share. Source: Smartfeed.
The startups each gets $50,000 in seed funding plus $75,000 to cover the program costs, and will get opportunities to refine their offerings, present entrepreneurial ventures at monthly design/sprint reviews, and pitch to audiences on both coasts at a final Demo Day event.
“The seeds of the next great media institutions will be planted this year by courageous entrepreneurs who make the leap to build ventures that speak truth to power, close the empathy gap, and take a radically inclusive approach to amplifying the voices of all people,” the announcement added.
“Media is probably at its most dynamic, most evolutionary time in its history,” says Shane Smith CEO of Vice Media, after raising $450 million from TPG this past week to “build the largest millenial video library in the world.”
“With Facebook and Google taking an ever-growing piece of the online advertising pie, looming ‘skinny bundles’ and OTT/DTC offerings exploding the media status quo – networks have to be nimble, smart and fast moving,” Smith added
David Callahan, Founder of Inside Philanthropy. Credit: Kuow Photo/ David Hyde
Populism that is sweeping parts of the U.S. nation and the world may be starting to creep into philanthropy.
“Elites often know best about how to advance the common good,” David Callahan argues at Inside Philanthropy. “But if funders won’t say such a thing aloud, the truth is that many believe exactly that … [except] America is in the midst of an epic backlash against elites, one that’s put a reality TV maestro in the White House.”
What's At Stake
Kristin A. Goss and Jeffrey M. Berry similarly argues at HistPhil that the populist surge now poses at least 3 challenges to elite philanthropy. “Will philanthropies reorient their giving – and their public voice – in a sustained way to counter threats to a high-functioning, civil, and inclusive democracy?
As this larger debate swirls around us, few leading foundations and philanthropists appear to be grasping what may be at stake.”
Why These Emerging Views Matter
The act of impact investing, intentionally investing for the purpose of change, positive good and financial return, is seen by many as a type of natural evolution of Philanthropy 2.0.
“Philanthropy is transitioning to impact investing, which is really having a Theory of Change around an idea, using your institution’s resources, to really have a focus area, have an impact, measure those results, and hold yourselves accountable for driving change,” former Goldman Sachs executive and now Whitehouse adviser Dina Habib Powell explained last year.
Dina Habib Powell, head of Goldman Sachs’ Impact Investing business and president of the Goldman Sachs Foundation, and former assistant secretary of state, discuss the private sector’s crucial role in job creation, female empowerment, and the global spread of economic development and opportunity. Click or Tap to watch the video. Source: American Enterprise Institute.
A populist-driven backlash against perceptions of philanthropy as “elitist” may touch impact investing as likewise a “haven for the elites.”
In many ways, this evolution is unavoidable. Modern philanthropy, dubbed “Philanthropy 2.0” in some circles, recognizes that yesterday’s Rockefeller and Carnegie solo approaches make it harder to make impact that scales and is sustainable.
Today’s networked approaches to philanthropy and investing with intentionality acknowledge that to solve big problems like malaria, hunger or climate change, it is not only necessary to deploy large funding but also the right levels of infrastructure that allows organizations, like the Gates Foundation for example, to double their impact output.
Redefining Roles
David Callahan suggests these are good reasons enough for the sector to engage in its own introspection about elite power.
“The larger backdrop here, of course, is that America is in the midst of an epic backlash against elites, one that’s put a reality TV maestro in the White House. So far, philanthropy has been insulated from this broader convulsion, but there are good reasons for the sector to engage in its own introspection about elite power. Some of that introspection is already occurring, to be sure, with new conversations underway about how philanthropoids and coastal do-gooders might get out of their supposed “bubbles.”
Still, there’s not yet much discussion about the bigger question regarding how much sway private philanthropy—and a growing class of savvy “super-citizens”—should have over public life in a democratic society like ours.”
As do Goss and Berry.
“Philanthropy is a critical element in the American system of interest articulation and representation. Philanthropic dollars support civil society organizations, which provide a voice to everyday people.
The election has provoked a surge in democratic engagement as evidenced by large and sustained protest marches, booming membership in legacy organizations such as the League of Women Voters, and the formation of political organizations urging constituents to speak out and even run against their elected officials.
Spontaneous individual donations of money and time have fueled this surge in engagement, yet thus far there is little evidence that leading foundations see a new or expanded role for themselves in these movements.
To be sure, some leading philanthropies and their donors have responded to the times. They have done so by verbally affirming their support for progressive causes, by providing new funds to organizations representing those commitments, or both.
In terms of funding, the Rockefeller Foundation has given $1.5 million to buttress civil rights and liberties; the California Endowment has allocated $25-million to support health care for vulnerable children; and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged $20-million for reproductive health organizations harmed by the revived “global gag rule.” Pierre Omidyar has announced a $100 million effort to shore up journalism, and George Soros has pledged $10 million to combat hate crimes.
Likewise, the Center for Effective Philanthropy found in a recent survey that almost 30 percent of 162 foundation CEOs intended to make changes in light of Trump administration initiatives.
It’s possible that such changes haven’t been implemented yet. Perhaps America’s foundations are lumbering giants that just move slowly.”
Julia combines the versatility of Python and R with the speed of C, its makers claim. Source: Juliacomputing
Open-source language Julia’s creator Julia Computing snags $4.6 million, ride-hail services Grab’s $1.5 billion (in talks) and Ola’s $50 million were among this past week’s notable deal news, but perhaps not as big as news of Whole Foods’ acquisition by Amazon.
Goodera – a platform that connects companies with nonprofits, has raised $5.5 million in Series A funding. Goodera’s platform allows companies and non-profit organisations complete visibility over the progress of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) projects, as well as measure-impact assessment. Based in Bengaluru, India.
Julia Computing – this week’s spotlight, the creator of open source programming language Julia, has raised $4.6 million. Julia is an emerging, modern open-source language for data science, machine learning and scientific computing, and which is now being used in areas like healthcare to model cancer genomes or like transportation to simulate self-driving cars and aviation safety. Julia combines the functionality, ease-of-use and syntax of other languages like R, Python, Matlab, SAS or Stata with the speed, capacity and performance of C, C++ or Java. Based in Bengaluru, India and Berkeley, California.
Mobike – Chinese bike-sharing startup announced last week that it has raised $600 million in new funding led by Tencent ― on top of the $300 million that Mobike raised just a few months back. Based in Shanghai, China. [See the related post of bike-sharing provider Limebike in March]
Modacruz – a leading mobile, online and social marketplace of second hand women fashion items in Turkey, has raised $2 million in Series B funding. Based in Istanbul, Turkey.
Ola – ride-hail and cab aggregator company reportedly has raised $50 million in new funding. Based in Bengaluru, India. Softbank, which also funded Grab this past week, led the raise and now has a 40% stake in the company.
Syntimmune – a biotech startup working on rare immune diseases, has raised $50 million in Series B funding. Syntimmune’s leaders believe their company has found a way to block the immune system’s attack on the body. Based in New York, New York.
Wonderschool– a new platform that aims to solve America’s expensive daycare quagmire by enabling qualified childcare providers to open in-home daycares and preschools, has raised $2 million in seed funding. Based in San Francisco, California.
The main reason is that Grab charges a lower base fare than Uber does. Consequently, Grab has consistently beat Uber in terms of download ranking, according to data collected from the Apple App Store.
Big oil companies and other American corporations have endorsed a carbon “tax and dividend” plan that has been suggested by some elder leaders of the Republican Party as the “most efficient and effective way” to tackle climate change.
The Idea
By making energy derived from fossil fuels more expensive, the free market will move more quickly and effectively toward renewable energy and other low-carbon solutions.
Pollution or Tax Shield?
Pollution Shield?
While the proposal has been touted as a free market, “conservative climate solution,” it also calls for the rolling back of Obama-era climate regulations and shields polluting companies from lawsuits over their contribution to climate change.
“It would scrap many existing pollution controls,” according to Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter.
What the Idea Assumes
A market-driven approach will have the same effect in reducing emissions as regulations would.
Its Backers
Laurene Jobs, widow of Steve Jobs and philathropist, James A. Baker III and George P. Shultz, both former secretaries of state, and Henry M. Paulson Jr., a former secretary of the Treasury, Larry Summers, former Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton. Four major oil companies, environmental groups and other leaders – see the full list. And the full ad on the Wall Street Journal.
Key Message
“We expect that when the moment is right, the companies will lend their lobbying weight to our plan,” Ted Halstead, the chief executive of the Climate Leadership Council, who also said the group did not accept or is seeking corporate contributions. It will instead seek funding from philanthropies, donors and other possible private [investing] parties.
Human talent has become a bottleneck and impediment to impact investing’s growth, argues Paul Breloff, Yale Law School alumni, former Managing Director of the Accion Venture Lab, and now CEO of Shortlist, who helps source and screen high-performing talent in emerging markets.
A number of factors, Mr. Breloff explains, could explain the issue (paraphrased):
Why? Read More
No owner: Most funders are issue- or sector-specific, and talent who belongs to neither often slips through the cracks.
No comfort zone: Most impact investors come from financial backgrounds and are more comfortable talking money than people.
No easy answers: Structural issues like local education systems and globalization; individual differences in personality, circumstances and abilities; firm-level differences in organizational context and culture resist easy fixes.
No success stories: There hasn’t been human capital poster children yet but impact-oriented talent players like RippleWorks, Omidyar Network’s human capital team, African Leadership Network, Spire, and Breloff’s own company Shortlist can start to change this.
No convening body: Lack of centralized talent network focusing on entrepreneurs, and impact investor communities.
Opportunities to Action
“We need more pioneering investors to see this as an area of great opportunity.
Omidyar Network has been a leader here, setting up an in-house “human capital” team to help their investees attract, develop and retain top talent – but I’m not aware of other impact investors who have shown such commitment.
Organizations like Argidius Foundation, Blue Haven Initiative and AHL Venture Partners (all funders of ours) have made human capital a focus area, but they are the exceptions (unless the broad bucket of “education” or “edtech” counts).
At Shortlist, we just went through a fundraising process and heard a similar refrain from many impact investors: “Human capital is not within scope or is not a mandate fit,” or “human capital only counts as ‘impact’ if focused on people making less than $2 a day.” I’m hoping more investors and funders start to see this as an important issue with the promise of system-level impact, up and down the salary scale.
Even for investors who don’t start investing in human capital companies, I hope they can focus more actively on human capital issues within portfolio companies. When making an investment, go deeper than assessing the co-founder biographies: Spend time understanding the organizational structure, staffing plans, recruitment strategies, training programs and the company’s values.
I’ve seen impact investors spend weeks digging through financial models, formation documents and board minutes, but not ask a single question about the culture and sub-C-suite team.
If investors cared more about people, so would entrepreneurs – you can help entrepreneurs prioritize people just by asking about them.
We also have an opportunity to learn from mainstream global trends around the future of work and the evolving higher education landscape. It’s a heady time with many calling for the unbundling and disruption of higher education, the digitization of economic opportunity, and new tools to help companies find, recruit, manage and train talent. Let’s learn from the best and bring these new practices and technologies into our markets and investments.”
About Shortlist
After helping businesses launch in Kenya and other emerging markets for 12 years, Paul Breloff co-founded Shortlist after he saw that there was little to no way for companies to acquire the talent to help propel those same firms to growth.
“The winners of this year’s Wireless Innovation Project continue the program’s reputation of honoring promising wireless and mobile innovations designed to impact the global community,” said Andrew Morawski, Board of Directors Chairman and President, Vodafone Americas Foundation.
“PathVis, WIPER, and DreamSave represent the vast possibilities that technology can bring to solving critical issues such as diseases, wildlife, and financial inclusion. They join the 24 previous winners who have received Vodafone Americas Foundation support through the competition to help bring their innovation to scale.
• First Place (US $300,000) PathVis – A smartphone-based detection platform built to directly detect and help track infectious diseases afflicting over 250 million people world-wide. This detection technology uses a novel, breakthrough method to obtain results in less than 30 minutes- which can provide health organizations with real-time surveillance data to decrease costs and increase efficiency in identifying outbreaks and preventing further spread of disease. PathVis plans to leverage the prize money to specifically fight against cholera, as it is a highly infectious disease affecting roughly 1.3 to 4 million people each year, resulting in 21,000 to 143,000 deaths worldwide.
• Second Place (US $200,000) WIPER – A wireless anti-poaching collar for elephants and other animals across Africa that uniquely combines tracking and gunshot detection technology to automatically send the location of poaching events to authorities in real time. WIPER hopes to be a strong asset in combating poaching and saving rapidly declining elephant and rhino populations. The African elephant population sharply decreased by 20 percent over the past 10 years2 , primarily due to illegal poaching, while the rhino population has plummeted more than 97 percent since 1960.3 WIPER can disrupt poaching and prevent irreparable damages to the environmental ecosystem through pioneering ballistic shockwave detection, a tool that cannot be tricked by gun mufflers regularly used by poachers.
• Third Place (US $100,000) DreamSave – An innovative mobile solution with the potential to help millions of unbanked members of informal savings groups around the world break the cycle of poverty. With this tool, people who have been invisible to the global economy will have direct access to a wide range of modern financial services, even if they live miles from the nearest bank. DreamSave will leverage mobile money integration, machine learning, behavioral science, and ground breaking new technology optimized for remote areas with limited internet access. By designing DreamSave as part of a broader digitally-connected community, users will also have access to a wide range of related services, unlocking their potential to create lasting social and economic change.
Al Gore and David Blood, in Generation’s New York City Office. August 25, 2015. Photo by: Christopher Griffith
By at least one report, the largest sustainable investment strategy is “exclusionary screening,” $15 trillion or 65% of the $23 trillion managed globally.
Viewing “ethics” essentially as a minus, or a “negative” unavoidable cost of doing the right thing, it is the opposite approach of how people at Generation Investment Management, a company that is rarely mentioned in mainstream media coverage of former Vice President Al Gore, chooses its deals.
“We were blind and didn’t know what we couldn’t see,” Gore suggests.
Most of what is called “financial” analysis today — price-to-earnings ratios, market caps, CNBC punditry, Federal Reserve speculation — is equivalent to the same tiny slice of the entire spectrum the human eyes can see, Gore believes.
It involves subtly shifting investment optics from “negative screening” to “holistic” and “sustainable” view as business plusses, “in the service of long-term greed.” The new approach helps better meet investor appetites for profitability and seeking alpha, as well as today’s proclivities for seeking sustainability.
The study discussed the notion of materiality, like SASB’s implementation, and of ESG, the notion that in addition to normal profit-and-loss calculations, a firm ought to consider the environmental, social, and governance effects of what it does.
The Oxford/Arabesque report found strong evidence that “it is in the best economic interest for corporate managers and investors to incorporate sustainability considerations into decision-making processes.”
Theory to Practice
The road map. Generation originates candidate investment decisions via a set of “road map” reports, long-term views of business, environmental, and social aspects of emerging technologies or markets.
The focus list. Generation next researches specific firms, based on outputs of the roadmapping process and other inputs.
Active ownership. Generation then makes the deals, and actively participates in strategic and tactical operational reponsibilities to help the firms it invests in realize their potential.
Proterra's all electric buses have a range of 350 miles. Firms like Tesla are not far behind if not in front. Source: Proterra
Transportation innovators Proterra, Ponycar, Supr Daily and Mercadoni are among the notable investing deals this past week. Nearly $85 million was raised for the 4 firms this week.
Proterra was among the investments profiled in the Atlantic by Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management firm.
Mercadoni– a grocery delivery app and service startup based in Colombia, Mexico and Argentina, has raised $6.2 million in Series A funding. The startup claims its platform helps avoid for its approximately 250,000 customers about 4 hours per week in Latin American cities ranked by Waze as among having the most chaotic traffic in the world.
Eloxx Pharmaceuticals – develops therapeutics to treat complex and incurable genetic diseases such as Cystic Fibrosis, Cystinosis, Duchene Muscular Dystrophy and Rett Syndrome, has raised $24 million in VC funding. Based in Israel.
“Tesla managed to surpass Ford’s market cap in part because investors value the potential of its electric drivetrain technology,” analyst and co-head of Growth Equity Colin LeDuc. says. “Proterra offers a similar value for the bus market.”
Proterra buses claim a range of 350 miles (comparable to Tesla’s now top range of 335 miles in its Model S 100D or its rumored semi-truck that is expected to debut later this year).
With battery costs falling and EV technology improving, Proterra is poised to deliver. The company has sold more than 375 vehicles to municipal, university and commercial transit agencies throughout the U.S. See another video on why Worcester Transit chose Proterra.
Supr Daily – a dairy and grocery delivery service in India, has raised $1.5 million in VC funding. Like Mercadoni, it aims to bring more order to India’s chaotic system of morning milk deliveries, made complex because of urbanized traffic and milk’s short shelf life (see our brief on Dodla). Based in Mumbai, India.
