About socialinvestments.com

Our Aim

We want socialinvestments.com to be the site that gives investors better access than exists anywhere else to intelligent commentary on the social business sector and information about the companies within it.  We would like this site to be as useful as possible to the investor and to social businesses and so welcome suggestions on how we could improve our offering.

Background

Companies in the social business sector are poorly served (or not served at all) by financial commentators.  We consider this lack of information to be a considerable obstacle to investment.  We have built socialinvestments.com because we believe that it will facilitate the flow of much-needed investment into the sector.

Principles 

During the development of this website we have tried to adhere to the following principles:

• Honest reporting: Clearly stating both the upsides and downsides.

• Transparent motives: Ensuring that readers know who benefits from activity on the site and how.  We aim to state all conflicts of interest of which we are aware.

• Broad cover: We aim to cover as much of the spectrum of companies in the social business sector as is possible, from the listed large caps to the grass-roots, non-profit-seeking social enterprises. This is an ongoing project.

• Easy to use: Designing and building this site so it is easy to use. We control the content here at Catalyst, meaning that we can respond quickly to feedback and suggestions.

Our Classification System

One of the greatest challenges of building this website has been deciding on a classification system for the social business sector.  After much deliberation we settled on a five-strand system, classifying each company and, where possible, news story by:

• Industrial sector (and sub-sector): This list was inspired by the FTSE and AIM sector lists because we wanted to keep to a system that was relatively familiar to investors.  However, some changes have been made in order to ensure a 'snug fit' to the social business sector.

• Social, environmental and ethical (SEE) benefit:  This is a list of 24 common benefits brought about by a social business' activities 

• Social business sector affiliation: Some categories, such as organic food, remained uncovered by the first two systems.  This is a list of 23 affiliations, often the way in which consumers, rather than investors, would group social businesses.

• Size:  We have included information on turnover, profit and employee numbers, so far as it is available.

• Certification: There are a number of different certifications in use in the social business sector which we thought would be a useful way of categorising some companies.  Examples are Fairtrade and Soil Association.

Please have a look around the site and tell us what you think.