Concept of Stock Social Impact Exchange
The portuguese Stock Social Impact Exchange was created in 2009. It is a platform for financing civil society institutions and, like the traditional stock exchange, replicates its operation, aiming to channel investment to projects/organizations, promoting the meeting of investors and organizations/projects that need financing.
History
The Stock Social Impact Exchange was created within the Euronext network, and could serve as a model for the other European Stock Exchanges, members of that network. The Stock Social Impact Exchange arose from a completely innovative perspective, based on the idea of investing in organizations of the Social Economy Sector and within the context of a stock exchange.
This stock exchange supports for these organizations will be interpreted, not from the perspective of philanthropy and charity, but from the perspective of an investment that should generate a new type of profit: “social profit”.
In the perspective of the social investment, the Stock Social Impact Exchange aims to allow innovative projects in the social area to have visibility with civil society, through its presentation to social investors who will be the future donors, acquiring social actions or making donations. Thus, “The perspective of social investment, compared to other forms of support to the sector, presupposes a return that, not yet being financial, is not less important: it is the social return measured in terms of the impact of the organizations financed here on society Portuguese. “
Investments in the Stock Social Impact Exchange in projects in the areas of health and well-being, education, human rights, citizenship, social entrepreneurship, social inclusion and institutional strengthening have the seal of guarantee of technical and financial soundness, as well as the capacity to monitor the evaluation of the his own intervention.
The Stock Social Impact Exchange evaluates the social impact of the listed projects during its implementation and in the elaboration of a final evaluation, allowing to assure the investor that their money is being well applied.
The social investor
The social investor will be a ‘donor’, meaning social investment ‘the money donated by the social investor to quoted projects’. The latter acquires social actions, which in terms of said Glossary will be donation units established by the Stock Social Impact Exchange, in the same logic of the capital market whose listed companies issue shares to be acquired by investors.
The investor expects something translated not in a financial return, but a new type of profit, the social profit, being understood as such the positive results for the community generated by the project supported through the Stock Social Impact Exchange. In the donation a spirit of liberality is still demanded on the part of the disposer, implying, as a rule, this spirit of liberality the idea of generosity or spontaneity, opposed to that of necessity or duty, which will also occur with investment in the Stock Social Impact Exchange.
The requirements of transparency and governance
The “stock exchange listing” implies, under the terms of the Stock Social Impact Exchange Glossary, the company, when negotiating its social actions on the stock exchange, undertakes commitments of transparency and governance.
Civil Society Organizations with projects listed in the Stock Social Impact Exchange undertake to keep up-to-date information on the evolution of their projects, to provide the Resource Application Plan for each request for transfer of funds, as well as quarterly technical and financial reports.
The Stock Social Impact Exchange can, at any moment, carry out an audit with the Civil Society Organization which, for this purpose, undertakes to make available all records and documents related to the listed project. In addition, the Stock Social Impact Exchange will make available on the website the information necessary for social investors to monitor the evolution of their social investments. Failure to comply with these conditions by listed organizations will cause the immediate suspension of the transfer of resources and the exclusion of the Stock Social Impact Exchange project.
A rigorous information dissemination regime is therefore required to make the administration of the organization transparent, as well as the existence of respect for codes of governance that are often like non-taxatory laboratories of roads, which can be incorporated into binding instruments and clarify the question of what governance structures and types of managers should be given to enterprises in the social economy in order to improve their level of economic performance in a manner compatible with the maintenance and the reinforcement of their identity characteristics.
