SOCIAL BUSINESS VENTURE CAPITAL FUND

Since 2010, the Fondazione Grameen Italia has been committed to combining its strong social vocation with the economic and financial context in which it operates, in order to promote and spread greater awareness of the social and economic issues of our time.

The message “Zero unemployment, Zero poverty, and Zero carbon emissions” launched by Prof. Yunus represents a strong message. It is time to admit that capitalism is also a broken engine and that its current form leads us to persistent inequalities, massive unemployment, and the destruction of the environment.
We need a new economic system in which altruism and creativity play a key role. It is, therefore, necessary to design tools capable of changing the way of thinking and implementing this new vision.

Fondazione Grameen Italia is, therefore, planning an impact finance tool intended to finance a specific type of company called Social Business, modeled according to the principles of Prof. Yunus. A Social Business is the company created exclusively to solve social and environmental problems, such as those related to climate change, unemployment and poverty while relying on corporate sustainability criteria.

Specifically, the Fondazione Grameen Italia envisages the establishment of a Social Business Venture Capital Fund, a fund that invests in the social capital of Social Businesses with the aim of generating a significant social or environmental impact.

It is an innovative tool capable of providing liquidity to social enterprises, investing directly in their capital without requiring any form of remuneration, but simply the return of the capital itself by the company with predefined times and methods.

Together with the social orientation of the Fund, the other peculiarity of the Fondazione Grameen Italia project is represented by the fact that the Microcredit is combined with the investment in the capital in order to increase the liquidity made available to each social enterprise. In fact, it is a multiplier of social effect, which exploits the so-called leverage effect. Let’s not forget that the essence of Microcredit lies in the ability to activate the entrepreneurial skills inherent in vulnerable and/or non-bankable people and therefore combines naturally with the social objective of the fund.

The strength of the Fund lies not only in the impact of the individual initiatives but in their number and diffusion. All the initiatives that will arise, multiplied and coordinated for the common good, will give rise to significant global action, as the experiences of Microcredit and Social Business of Fondazione Grameen Italia demonstrate. Now it is a question of taking a further step forward with the Social Business Venture Capital Funds which, by investing in those companies with a strong social vocation, become the real stimulus for the development not only of the economy but above all of the people.

It’s time to think about an economic-social recovery project that is based on people’s ability to be entrepreneurs, job creators and not job seekers: a new restart program for the economy.