Calvert Giving Fund
San Francisco Business Times
July 2007
Web site connects world of social capital;
Xigi has 1,600 groups signed up
By Sarah Duxbury
Xigi.net aims to unscramble the complicated networks of who's doing what in the social capital world.
"It makes sense of the first 20 minutes of a Google search -- who someone is, who they know, where you might partner and what the good discussions might be," said Kevin Jones, who co-founded San Francisco-based Xigi with Sara Olsen and Mark Beam. "It puts relationships into a structured order."
Social capital refers to the money, people and ideas -- both for profit and not for profit -- committed to social change.
The site debuted in December and already has over 1,600 organizations and 1,300 people listed and mapped.
Dozens more groups and individuals join weekly in this non-hierarchical snapshot of the social capital marketplace -- all without any concentrated effort to grow or market Xigi.
"The maps turn out to be a gateway drug," Jones said, noting that people started adding themselves to the Xigi database once it introduced the mapping feature. "We have turned power and money relationships into a database that can be visualized automatically -- how it flows, who decides which way the money goes and reporting relationships ... in this fair trade, social entrepreneur, microfinance world."
'Social network approach'
Ideally, Xigi users will use the maps to find a way in to potential funders, like Omidyar Network, a Redwood City fund that makes mission-related investments in nonprofits and for-profits. It can also spare funders from inappropriate grant seekers by helping upstarts do their homework.
There's some oversight to the wiki-based system to make sure that users don't exaggerate or claim false relationships. The site was just upgraded to better showcase the maps and pull content from other sources more easily, but that hasn't solved all its usability challenges, some say.
"I like what they're trying to do, to create a social network approach to researching social change projects. ... But the fundamental act of using it is not pleasant yet," said Allan Gunn, executive director of Aspiration Tech, a San Francisco nonprofit focused on helping other nonprofits better use technology. Gunn added that the maps might be more intuitive to investors than to nonprofits who perhaps aren't as well versed in the language of capitalism.
Connecting two worlds
Indeed, at this point Xigi.net primarily benefits those already in the social capital inner circle, said Lucy Bernholz, president of Blueprint R&D and a philanthropy blogger.
"What it's done in its short lifespan is find a way to jump the fence to find the connection between the social responsibility world and someone on the investment side," Bernholz said. But Xigi is not yet well known in the broader nonprofit community.
Of course, this blended value or social capital is a nascent market, so there's not yet a flood of money there for Xigi to track. That is changing, and Xigi will become more useful as it does, Jones said.
Jones plans an offshoot, Xigi.biz, as a way to monetize Xigi's mapping of power and money relationships for other markets. Jones said there has been some interest in Xigi's software, and he's in conversations with potential clients, including a market research firm.
If the Xigi team creates a revenue model for Xigi.biz, those funds will support nonprofit Xigi.net.
For now, Calvert Foundation's the fiscal sponsor, enabling Xigi.net to accept donations, but others support it, too, including Omidyar Network, the Lemelson Foundation and Collective Intelligence.
Jones is also the founder of Good Capital, which is raising a $30 million fund to invest in social enterprises. It will soon make its first investments.
