Impact Investing, Social Enterprise and Global Development

Abstract

While philanthropic giving has a long history amongst the wealthy, Western foundations and ultra-wealthy individuals now channel copious amounts of money into social enterprises and global development in specific ways. We focus on the phenomenon of “impact investing” in which powerful actors harness financial means and transform philanthropic ‘giving’ into a profit-oriented process. Impact investing turns philanthropy into a proliferating financial market, creating new streams of capital and ‘value’, and incorporating more people and territories into global financial networks. This process is backed by a specific industry and institutional organisations, which produce peculiar financial geographies at various scales.