Guest post by Megan McFadden
Social Capital Markets

SOCAP11 — the fourth annual Social Capital Markets conference — has announced that more than 50 global social entrepreneurs have been awarded a full scholarship to the event taking place Sept. 6-9 in San Francisco.

Among those attending will be:

• David Auerbach, founder of Sanergy, who is working for sustainable sanitation in Kenyan slums

• Catlin Powers, founder of One Earth Designs, who is incubating local innovation in China

• Mohamed Ali Niang, founder of Malo Traders, who is working to ensure that rice farmers in Mali do not go hungry. 

See the full list of social entrepreneurs.

SOCAP is the leading global event to connect not only social entrepreneurs and investors, but a community of cross-sector individuals working together to build a market at the intersection of money and meaning. (Socialbrite founder JD Lasica will also be attending.) This year, SOCAP11 offers an Entrepreneur Track that will support social entrepreneurs with pitch sessions, mentoring opportunities and connections to investors who can help support their mission for change.

Early discount ends next week

Are you a social entrepreneur or interested in learning more about the space? We’re happy to extend a special deep discount of 30 percent off registration if you enter Discount Code SOCENT30, valid until Aug. 23 (a week from today) or until the event sells out.

The deadline for the SOCAP11 Innovation Showcase is today. Apply be part of the exhibit, which opens Sept. 7.

The post Social entrepreneurs heading to SF for SOCAP11 appeared first on Socialbrite.

Guest post by Katrina Heppler
envisionGOOD.tv

Last October, 630 people interested in advancing the social good through social entrepreurship flocked to San Francisco for the first Social Capital Markets conference (@socap09 on Twitter).

envisionGood.tv caught up with Kevin Jones, co-founder of the conference (and @kevindoylejones on Twitter) at The Hub in Berkeley, Calif., to get the lowdown on this year’s SoCap, which will bring together leading catalysts of positive social change for a day of learning, knowledge exchange, and connecting in San Francisco on Sept. 1–3.

For more info or to register, visit http://www.SocialCapitalMarkets.net.

Visit envisionGood.tv for more interviews with thought leaders in the social causes space.

The post Behind the scenes at Social Capital Markets appeared first on Socialbrite.

I’m here mostly to get the lay of the land. Ourmedia.org wants to support nonprofits and social change organizations by offering a suite of social media tools for cause campaigns. And SoCap is turning out to be a gathering where both the wealth of sessions and the hallway connections are equally valuable.

During today’s session on Pitching Your Organization, panelists offered tips on attracting seed funding for your social enterprise venture:

• "open with an eye-catching stat," not just a generic statistic about the size of the marketplace

• very high up in your pitch: what problem are you solving?

• who’s involved in your effort who’s impressive in this space?

For later-stage funding:

• how big can it grow to be?

• how impressive a team have you assembled?

• tell a story. try to establish an emotional connection.

• if you’re turned down, try to get some feedback on what didn’t work. what were the holes in the proposal? if they liked it but it wasn’t up their alley, ask them to forward it to other VCs who might be interested.

• for followups, use the phone, not email.

A few of the folks I interviewed or chatted with included:

• Kevin Jones, organizer of the conference
• Sara Olsen of SVT Group
• Joyce Kim of Fortis
• Jerry Michalski of Sociate
• Juliana Pastoriza of Brazil’s Geracao de Impacto (Impact Generation)
• Jim Schorr of the Center for Responsible Business at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley
• Barbara Roder of TUM Business School in Munchen, Germany (sorry, too tired to look up diacritic marks right now)

Heading back on Tuesday.

Cross-posted to Socialmedia.biz

The post How to attract funding for a social enterprise appeared first on Socialbrite.