Serving the Underserved
Marketing to Make a Difference
RSF Social Finance was recently featured in Forbes. Author Patrick Hanlon, shares stories of social entrepreneurs across the world using the power of business to address economic and social challenges.
The numbers who are underserved is beyond counting. The important news is that the ways we help to support other human beings is evolving, transforming.
The tipping point is gyrating like a mobius strip.
“Structurally it has been a little botched,” says Don Shaffer, president and chief executive officer of RSF Social Finance. “The emergence of impact investing is encouraging.”
Impact investments are made to companies, organizations, and funds with the intention to generate measurable social and environmental impact. This is a flip on typical venture capital investing, where most firms are in search of scalable opportunities.
“We are the opposite,” says Shaffer. “If our financial system today is complex, opaque and anonymous, the world we would like to see is direct, transparent and personal—based on long-term relationships.”
Shaffer cites two more differences. First, RSF Social Finance is funded by individuals and families, not by institutional investors. This means they are not driven by quarter-to-quarter financial results. They can take the longer view.
Second, RSF looks at companies designing new platforms that create wholesale change. That means the funded company itself may remain local, but their concept may be scalable to other communities.
