How We Work

SVS’s Theory of Change

Korea Social Value and Solidarity Foundation’s mission is to maximize social values by catalyzing social investments from public and private social investors to social value creating organizations/enterprises and building social finance ecosystem through social finance intermediaries.
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Area of Action 1.
Providing Investments & Loans
to Social Economy Organizations/Enterprises
SVS invests directly or indirectly to social economy enterprises/organizations including social enterprises, cooperatives, social ventures, and impact-driven startups for their sustainable development.
SVS provides funds for social finance intermediaries to establish impact funds to address blind spots in sectoral and regional financial supply and builds an effective social finance supply system. We function as catalytic capital to promote cooperation between policy finance, institutional finance, and private investors, and support the participation of social investors through offering upfront investments or subordinated capital as needed.
Our investment principles
  • Reducing the social finance funding gap
  • Effective social value creation
  • Priority on community-based social economy organizations and projects
  • Priority on matching social economy self-help funds and local government funds
  • Targeted investment ratio for social economy enterprises
  • Encourage collaborative and solidarity structure among social economy organizations
Partner social finance intermediaries
Investments
Loans
Area of Action 2.
Providing investments and loans to projects
with social and environmental purposes
SVS invests in projects to solve and prevent social issues.
We support innovative impact projects such as social impact bonds (SIBs), civic assetization projects to stabilize community healthcare and revitalize communities, incubation of labor mutuals for precarious workers, social housing projects, etc. We also foster local intermediary financial institutions for social economy, and create an environment for impact investing.
Focus Areas
  • Reducing economic and social inequality and bi-polarization
  • Promoting environmental sustainability
  • Increasing the utilization of social innovation technologies
  • Responding to the aging society
  • Activating social real estate through community ownership
Partner social finance intermediaries
Area of Action 3.
Building and Nurturing Social Finance Ecosystem
SVS contributes to create a sustainable social finance ecosystem by fostering social finance intermediaries, developing their capabilities, and advocating the value of social finance through events, networking, research and publications, and international cooperation.
SVS identifies policy issues to promote social finance and supports the revision and enactment of various regulations and laws. We conduct necessary policy researches and publish reports and books on social and solidarity economy, impact investing, social activism, etc. We also collect quantitive data on social finance provision in Korea, and translate important foreign case studies or reports for transferring knowledge on innovative models. We establish regular partnerships through membership and facilitate domestic and international discussions to enhance problem-solving capabilities in social finance.
Our Ecosystem Building Projects
  • Facilitating cooperative network, ‘Social Finance Forum’
  • Organizing events - international forum webinars, social investment IR
  • Capacity Building Trainings/Workshops for social finance intermediaries
  • Facilitating mutual learning groups for policy production
    • H-ESG : human centered ESG discussion group
    • BTSE : social economy policy research group
  • Research and publication on social finance ecosystem
  • International cooperation and knowledge exchange
Impact Framework
SVS Impact Goal Classification
SVS utilizes the impact classification of the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) to define the impact areas targeted by each investment and loan. Based on the framework, we employ the SVS Impact Goal (SIGs) to assess the social value orientation of our investment and lending programs and to monitor the areas of social value creation of its investee and borrower companies.
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