Social Impact Exchange

The Social Impact Exchange is a community of funders, advisors, wealth managers, nonprofits and researchers interested in learning together and developing practices for funding clusters of well-vetted initiatives that can shift systems and achieve large scale impact on difficult social problems. The Exchange serves as a focal point and gathering place for those interested in further building the field of scaling social impact, and a platform that facilitates the efficient flow of capital to scalable solutions and systems change efforts.

The Exchange has three main functions: (a) Build collaborative funder networks that fund and advance clusters of scalable, evidence-based interventions that together can achieve systems change and large scale impact on specific issues; (b) Develop and Communicate Knowledge, including research, training and education; (c) Build Field Infrastructure that enables a collective action marketplace to emerge, including communities of funders and other stakeholders that learn together, map problems and solutions together, and nominate and co-fund complimentary  interventions that are going to scale within a systems change context. 

The Exchange comprises a number of initiatives including an Annual Conference, a Learning Community, an online investment platform, funder networks, and Working Groups creating collective action scaling markets in specific issues of education, health and poverty and in local regions. It had a successful launch in the fall of 2009 and now has approximately 5,000 cross-sector members.

The Exchange is open to a diverse set of organizations and is highly member-driven. Members contribute ideas, initiatives, capital, research and more through working groups and communities of interest focused on addressing specific issues. The Exchange also actively engages other industry groups with similar missions as partners and collaborators.

The Exchange was established by the Growth Philanthropy Network (GPN), in partnership with Duke University’s Center for Strategic Philanthropy and Civil Society (CSPCS) and its Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurs (CASE). Funding for the Exchange has been provided by many foundations, including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation.