Takeaways, Highlights, and Lessons in Impact from the SOCAP24 Stages
From October 28 to 20, 2024, one of the largest communities of global impact leaders, practitioners, investors, entrepreneurs, and more gathered in the heart of downtown San Francisco with one common goal: mobilizing capital to address our world’s most critical issues. With eight content tracks, more than 100 sessions, and 240 speakers, the thousands of attendees were inspired and challenged to dig deeper into global issues to address systemic change.
Nothing compares to the power of what happens when we gather, connect, and co-create our vision for the future together. We’ve collected several takeaways from SOCAP24, highlighting some of the multitudes of outstanding moments and lessons in impact that were shared.
We’re already looking forward to SOCAP25! Join our mailing list here to be the first to know when tickets are on sale.
Get inspired and ready to take action with the thoughts we’ve captured from the SOCAP24 stages below. And don’t just take our word for it: You can find more insights from our community on our LinkedIn page and learn from what’s been shared under #SOCAP24.
SOCAP24 Takeaways: Monday
The first day of SOCAP24 invited us to take a closer look at how we can move from an individual outlook to putting on a systems lens. We have a unique opportunity to start on a personal level, with more depth and thoughtfulness. As Nicola Brown of Kokoro shared in the first-ever SOCAP Newcomer Welcome session, “Over the next three days, think about intention. What are your hopes for the relationships you want to create while you’re here? … Everyone here is looking to connect or collaborate in one way or another, so how will you intentionally connect and collaborate?”
We believe these personal and intentional collaborations, which go deeper into the root causes of the issues we are working on, will ultimately align us toward meaningful, scalable shifts in the systems that underpin all we do. We agree with Rodney Foxworth of Worthmore that “the people in this room are the people who are going to be responsible for shaping the growth and the future of impact investing.”
What we heard from the stages:
- “What if we stopped asking, ‘What about the risks?’ and started asking, ‘What about the opportunities?’” Marla Blow, Skoll Foundation | Brief & Bold
- “Our fundamental thesis is that by reducing biases, the funds will perform better.” Joanna Kuang, Illumen Capital | DEI, Ownership & Impact: The Track’s Opening Panel
- “We should all be on a mission to really listen to people we disagree with.” Emily Kasriel | Deep Listening for Impact – An Interactive Workshop
- “If we had a more pragmatic approach to thinking about where new technology should be applied as investors, we might look differently at the companies and founders we’re choosing to work with.” Katy Knight, Siegel Family Endowment | Is VC Eating Impact’s Lunch? Fueling Responsible Tech Investment
- “Capital flows can be more about relationships than due diligence.” Devin Culbertson, Grounded Solutions Network | Accelerating Community Investment: Strategies for Place-Based Capital Deployment
SOCAP24 Takeaways: Tuesday
We heard many pathways to action for systems change throughout SOCAP24, during panels, workshops, and in all the conversations in between. Speakers also shared insights into what’s needed for us to take meaningful, collaborative action:
- “The best thing impact investors can do is listen, really understand the true need.” Edgar Romney, Amalgamated Bank | Scaling Racial Equity and Climate Financing: The Opportunity of the MDI Sector
- “You can’t move faster than the speed of trust.” Margot Brandenburg, Ford Foundation | Unlocking Maximum Impact: A Roadmap to 100% Mission-Aligned Investing at a Global Social Enterprise
What we heard from the stages:
- “The gap between intention and action is significant and evidence of the amount of work still required.” Trevor Rozier-Byrd, Stackwell Capital | Ownership Pathways to Building Wealth
- “Any of us, regardless of how much money we have, can invest in this values-aligned way. I want millions of women to understand the power and potential of their money. We think these opportunities are only for rich clients, but it is as much for you as for anybody else.” Janine Firpo, Invest for Better | Invest for Better: A Fireside Chat with Janine Firpo
- “The work of changing hearts and minds is fundamental to changing funding systems. That in itself is a culture shift.” — Maria Nakae, Justice Funders | Building Power in Place: Culture-Centered Local Investments
- “We need to reinvent the impact investing ecosystem now if we want to see the kind of impact we can have by moving towards a more patient, risk-tolerant model of capital for long-term value.” Brigit Helms, Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship | Impact Investing Needs Less Cake
- “We need to do something and do something fast if we’re going to preserve the planet for the generations that come after us. … We are not outside of the ecosystem. We are a part of the ecosystem.” Katie Macc, Sorenson Impact Institute | Catalyzing Nature-Based Investment: Collaborative Insights from Impact Investors and Conservations Experts
- “If you look at our biggest problems in this world, they’re also our biggest markets.” Nasir Qadree, Zeal Capital Partners | Investing in Ecosystem-Level Impact
- “It costs $1 to $3 million to raise a $50 million fund. If you don’t come from wealth, that’s a built-in barrier.” Sonam Velani, Streetlife Ventures | Funding the Runway: Addressing Cash Flow Challenges for Emerging Investment Fund Managers
- “Rely on knowledge-sharing: If I give you a dollar, now you have a dollar and I don’t. But with knowledge, if I share knowledge with you, we both have it.” Renee Cheung, Bonterra Partners | Regenerative Economies: Discover Companies That Deliver Social, Natural, and Human Capital Returns
- “We know that a regenerative economy has to have a more widely distributed ownership in its economy as well.” Cordell Jacks, Regenerative Capital Group | Impact Acquisitions Funds: Surfing the ‘Silver Tsunami’ Towards Regenerative Economic Transition
- “The best way to take care of the planet is to keep people on their homelands and in their communities.” Alexis Bunten, JumpScale | Investor Readiness for Indigenous Innovation: Disrupting the Green Finance Status Quo
- “When it comes down to it, especially around early-stage investment, it’s about the team and the people and the trust.” Patti Chu, Mana Impact | Southeast Asia Impact Investing: Embarking with the Pioneers
SOCAP24 Takeaways: Wednesday
We are so grateful to attendees for sharing their whole selves at SOCAP24. We left the event buoyed, inspired, and reinvigorated to return to our work with new insights and perspective. In the words of Carol Anne Hilton of the Indigenomics Institute in our Closing Plenary, “It is time to shake out the economic system that is not serving the Earth and her people.”
What we heard from the stages:
- “There is creativity out there that needs to be discovered and enabled. … We have a responsibility to open doors and keep those doors open.” Cecilia Conrad, Lever for Change | Closing Plenary
- “This is where systems change can really begin and taken to be built in each of your communities in all parts of the world.” Jim Sorenson, Sorenson Impact Group | Closing Plenary
- “Technology has to be in service of human potential. People need to remain the center and at the helm of the transformation, not the subject of the transformation.” Paula Goldman, Salesforce | Closing Plenary
- “The way that ownership has worked is that it’s the driver of wealth because it has taken ownership from people and turned it into economic power. It’s time to bring that ownership back, not just for economic benefits but also for voice and power.” Brian Boland, Delta Fund | Unleashing an Ownership Economy
- “Impact is making things that people need and that the world wants. That’s impact.” Ola Brown, HealthCap Africa | Africa as an Emerging Frontier for Tech Investments and Impact-Driven Philanthropy
- “Pipeline-building is everybody’s responsibility. … We are working to dispel the myth that the pipeline simply doesn’t exist.” Payal Pathak, Visa Foundation; “The pipeline exists. Just write the damn check. “Anjani Harjeven, WomHub | Women: The Best Climate Investment You Can Make
- “Listen to the community, and what it is they are striving to do. Then show up with your best self to help them get to their desired outcome.” Kaitlin Watts, Institute for Child Success | Paying for Outcomes: A Key Strategy to Address Health Equity
- “We can’t talk about AI without talking about bias. We have to be thoughtful about how this is going to potentially impact our kids who look and act differently.” Amanda Bickerstaff, AI for Education | Navigating the AI Revolution: Opportunities and Risks in Education
- “Capital finds its way to the people who are connected to the people with capital. … If we are serious about inclusion, we, the people in this room, must be responsible for including. Go to events where you are the only one like you. Use your plus one to bring someone new into the room.” Jill Johnson, Institute for Entrepreneurial Leadership | Brief & Bold Talks: Deepening on Systems Change
- “It shouldn’t be the land steward opening their wallet every time. … It really takes an ecosystem to regenerate an ecosystem.” Manuel Piñuela Rangel, Cultivo Land PBC | Putting Nature on the Balance Sheet: Transitioning Corporate Responsibility from the CSO to the CFO
- “The health of nature should be linked to the strength of your economy. Destroy nature, destroy your economy. … Who owns nature? It owns us!” Martin Wainstein, Open Earth Foundation | Putting Nature on the Balance Sheet: Transitioning Corporate Responsibility from the CSO to the CFO
- “Ownership matters. … Together, what we can do to make this world whole — our land, our communities, our future. What would you build, if you could be whole?” Michael Hungerford, Seven Generations Capital | Brief & Bold Talks: Deepening on Systems Change
- “You can call it whatever you want as long as you’re moving money into communities in need.” Greg Neichin, Ceniarth | The Role of Catalytic Capital in Fostering Systemic Impact
Photos by Hardwig Media.
