SOCAP: Health
Investing in Health and Well-Being

SOCAP: Health will focus on new business models and investable opportunities in the social determinants of health (how cultural and societal factors relate statistically to well-being). We’ll create a new conversation that brings clarity to a path forward – a path towards health in a holistic sense of the word. SOCAP: Health will illustrate how working to proactively enable positive health can provide a new measureable marker of success – a health ROI (return on investment) – and open up the possibility for funding streams tied to the $2.7 trillion of private and public funding now spent annually on healthcare in the US alone. We’ll also look at health on a global scale, at successful investment approaches, and how models can be compared and exchanged in different social and geographic contexts.

Highlights include:

+ How social determinants of health affect the success of investments globally, and how those models are working in different geographies.
+ How health care reform is aligning with preventative and mHealth solutions to create investible opportunities that both empower communities and provide financial return.
+ How global health models can inform domestic impact investing models.

SOCAP: Oceans
Investing in the Link between People and Planet

There is a growing awareness of the connection between our well-being as humans and the health of our oceans. To fuel innovation and attract a broader set of stakeholders to participate in the sustainability of our oceans, SOCAP will reframe and energize the current conversation around healthy oceans. This initiative will empower individuals and organizations from diverse communities to see themselves as agents of change in preserving aquatic ecosystems, coastal livelihoods, and sustainable seafood supply chains. By reaching out to a new cast of characters to take a fresh look at the sources and systems that affect and are affected by the health of the ocean, the challenges will be reconceived in a way that supports existing ocean advocates as well as invites innovative new solutions.

Highlights include:
+ How funders of communities and ecosystems can successfully partner to produce positive outcomes for both people and the environment.
+ Innovations in technology and business models to support sustainable supply chains and livelihoods.
+ Opportunities for entrepreneurs and investors to go deep into promising solution spaces.

SOCAP: Communities
Place Based Innovation and Development

SOCAP: Communities will explore place-based innovation and development through providing examples of multi-dimensional, multi-stakeholder solutions that are applied in communities to generate an economy for good. In a progressively more global and transient society, creating grounded and stable communities is a significant endeavor. Increasingly, this community-building includes bringing entrepreneurial solutions to an area’s pressing challenges, as well as its visions for the future.

Highlights include:

+ International examples of innovation and partnerships that work to create restorative economic systems.
+ Examples from Detroit, where for-profit, non-profit and government groups are working on revitalization; and from Louisville as it seeks to expand its farm-to-market food system beyond a niche for the affluent.
+ Links with traditional, but powerful and innovative community development finance institutions (CDFIs) will get stronger as all participants learn to work together.
+ How co-working, place-based networks, and online networks can join forces to create impact communities.

SOCAP: Meaning
The Connection Between Mission and Me

Since our beginning in 2008, SOCAP has been called the conference at the intersection of money and meaning. Each year we’ve developed more content that looked explicitly through the meaning lens, and this year, we take it to a full track. Sessions in the track will explore why many of us invest for and work in organizations seeking to positively impact people and the planet. Whether sharing our stories as entrepreneurs or leading others to support our mission, meaning is central to our work. Sessions will explore spiritual and non-spiritual aspects of meaning and money. We will also have special content this year for faith leaders, to help them engage their communities in conversations about money and accelerating the good economy.

SOCAP: Investing
Impact Investing and Philanthropy

We will bring the latest research on impact investing best practices in a seminar, as well as sessions that explore investing in the health sector, opportunities in environmental services markets, and sessions of interest to individuals and institutions ready to move more of their own or customer assets to investing for impact.

SOCAP: Faith

In the United States, no important social change has been accomplished without the active involvement of faith leaders: from the emancipation of slaves to gay rights to women’s right to vote. We are exploring the continuation of this historical trend of effective change and are gathering a cohort of faith leaders, imams, rabbis, ministers, and priests who will be traveling through SOCAP13 together and looking to create the good economy in their faith communities when they go home.

SOCAP: Art

This year, in order to help people see and experience the intersection of the environment, economic justice, and the economy, we will be working with artists as entrepreneurs and with their work, including our partners at Intersection for the Arts. We will be looking at art as a tool to change people’s minds and hearts, and at the value of art itself to inspire us. We will be working with partners to help artists get enough of a rounded business sense to support their valuable expression.