 This is the launch of the Forth Sector Development Initiative. I would also like to point out, before we get started, that I believe Trump is speaking exactly at the same time, so this is interesting counter-programming we're doing. Today I'm joined in this counter-programming with Harad Sabeti, CEO of the Forth Sector Group. Charlotte Petri Gornitsaka. Gornitska? Gornitska? Chair of the Development and Assistant Committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, for sure, the OCD. And then we also have Heather Grady, who's the Vice President of the Rockefeller Philanthropic Advisory. And last but not least, Marilia Bezera, who's the Managing Partner at CARE Enterprise. So to get started, my first question, Harad, is very simple. What is the Forth Sector? Thank you. So I'll give you a very simple answer, too, so that most economies have evolved into three-sector models, so government, the private sector, for-profit business, and the third sector, which is nonprofits or NGOs. And for decades now, we've seen a boundaries between these sectors getting blurred. So more and more for-profit businesses have been taking on purpose, in essence, in social and environmental value creation as an expansion of their purpose beyond just pure profits. And at the same time, you've got lots of nonprofits and governmental organizations moving towards market-based approaches to scale and increase their effectiveness. So you've got these boundaries between the three traditional sectors getting more and more murky and blurry. At the same time, you've had this emergence of millions, really, of organizations around the world that don't fit the sort of traditional mold to the three sectors. They're combining logics across the three. So basically, they're primarily purpose-driven, the way we normally think about nonprofit organizations or governmental organizations. But they're also commercially engaged. They earn their revenues, or a majority of the revenues from market exchange. So this hybridization of the logics of for-profit and nonprofit basically is creating a new organizational space or sector at the intersection of the other three. And so for-benefit is sort of a generic term for these organizations. But there's lots of different varieties and lots of different namings and framings that people use to refer to them. So the four sectors is emerging landscape of organizations that's been for decades growing at the intersection of the traditional three. And now we're pivoting from what's been an organic emergence to what's becoming a formalization and recognition by governments and by various market actors. So in the same way that 100 years ago, the nonprofit sector really was just a bunch of fringe activity, charitable activity that wasn't necessarily institutionalized. This activity here is not institutionalized the way we think about the three formal sectors. So you can't find for-benefits through the lens of existing law. Even though the last 10 years or so, a number of different countries have passed new legislation to try to recognize various manifestations of these enterprises. It's still very, very nascent. So then I guess my question is for Charlotte and Heather. Why do we need it? What is the value of this four sector? So, well thank you. What we are trying to do with the council, which is about trying to unlock resources and engagement for implementing the SDGs and all the things that we need to do around that. We were focusing on what do we need to know and to do when it comes to governance issues like you and reform and other things like that? How can we foster public-private cooperation? Have we talked about that for long? Yes, we have. So what can our council explore when it comes to what's hindering and hampering? And also the SDGs is about sustainable development. Private sector might not wake up every morning talking about the SDGs, but they are talking about sustainability. So how can we help out and unlock things that are, that has to happen? You've heard that we need trillions to deliver the SDGs. I'm representing the donor community who provides 140 billion US dollars annually for ODA. We're far away from what we need to do. And part of the problem is that when we cooperate, we tend to jump into problems. We don't understand each other's languages. We might blur the lines. We even might blur accountability when we do cooperation. And why the fourth sector idea is so important to explore is because we're trying to put something, you know, a systematic thinking around something that we want to see more of. And we do believe in a systematic approach to new ideas. There are a lot of pilots out there. We need them, but we also need to learn from, why don't we get pilots up to scale? And part of the problem is that we don't systematically put our thought leaders around this. I think that the fourth sector has a point of departure now, which is great. I think we will find that we will perhaps have to change and shift and explore the model going forward. But I think it's gonna unlock a lot of potential when we talk about the civil society, private sector and government working together. So we're looking forward to it. And this is what councils are about. When WEF convenes people like us, powerful people, they should demand us to do more than just tell each other what we already do. And this is an example where we really try to explore together. So let me speak about the sector that I work in philanthropy. Our mission at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors is to promote thoughtful, effective philanthropy around the world. And what foundations and philanthropists do is work through grant making, through operational programs and increasingly through impact investing. And we work with people in the United States, Europe and increasingly in emerging markets, China, India, Africa, South America. What we find is whether it's grant making or program related investing or other types of impact investing, people are looking for new vehicles in which to invest. Not necessarily the traditional nonprofit, not necessarily the traditional business that tries to incorporate some social or environmental goals, but very much also these new hybrid forms of organizations. So a nonprofit that actually begins to generate revenue by creating some market-based approaches within their work or a business like a B Corp or others that from their very founding incorporate that social purpose within their DNA. And in a growing number of investors around the world, whether we're talking about people in China or people in Appalachia are interested in looking at these new models. So I think that the fourth sector, particularly when it's applied to the sustainable development goals framework, which is a kind of a taxonomy that we can all understand, whether we're in business or government or civil society or philanthropy. It's a very powerful framework for us to say, I want to invest in some kind of a new type of health organization or social enterprise or I want to invest in a new type of environmental organization or social enterprise. There are incredible opportunities here by knitting these things together. So Charlotte, I want to delve a little bit into why you in particular, your organization is involved in this. So I'm the OECD Development Assistance Committee Chair, the OECD Duck Chair. That means that I'm representing 30 members, 80% of the providers of Development Assistance globally. And we are looking for new ways of working to really deliver on the commitments that we made. It's important for the OECD Duck to help our members to accelerate their commitments. We are also there to enhance learnings. And what these members can do if they get to know about this fourth sector is to together with philanthropy and the NGOs and the corporate sector, they can find new ways of enabling this to happen in countries and they can invest in this new model and instead of old ways of working that might still be a solution but we know for sure that it's not everything we need. So for us, it's important to explore new approaches to development because we made promises. Part of what the OECD Duck is trying to do in parallel with the UN is to actually look into, well, how do we serve the members better? How can we change what we do to be a bit more agile and adapt to what's different when we implement sustainable goals instead of the development goals that we used to work with? And I'm trying to push us to be a bit more, a little bit more risk appetite and to be a little bit more explorative in the way we do our work because the community did promise a lot two years ago when they decided to embark on the STDs. OECD provides data. And it's a body that's there to influence policies and the fourth sector will lead to that. What do we need, what policies do we need to enable this fourth sector to act? I think that the OECD can be helpful when we're there and I have promised to convene a round table with members around this initiative to make it more known and to get members on board. Long answer, but hopefully clear. Heather, can you expand a little bit on who else is involved on this? On the fourth sector? Yes. Well, it's interesting, as a notion, I think when people first hear about it, they don't know what it means and that prompts them to ask. And once they ask and hear out or other people who've been working on this for years respond, it's very compelling. People really understand that the traditional boundaries between sectors isn't necessarily going to take the world where it needs to go. So we find whether it's academics at Stanford, I'm based out in California in the Bay Area. So academics at Stanford or academics in India or business leaders in Brazil or China or people who are in the US. It might be traditional business leaders who are thinking, wow, this really challenges our notion or it might be foundations that have traditionally only done grant making and they're saying, wow, we'd like to actually experiment with supporting some new types of investments. So I really think everything from academia to organizations, I mean, I should mention, we work with a lot of nonprofits and a lot of them feel that they're on a permanent fundraising treadmill. And so if they can find some way to build some market based mechanisms into their work without compromising at all their social purpose but really begin to build that in, that gives them not only a revenue stream that they can depend on, but it actually, we're launching a report today with the Skoll Foundation that's showing that that also can help them to have more equal power dynamics with their funders that are giving them grants because they have more of a level of independence through some of their revenue generation as well. So I think it really appeals to people across the spectrum. What we have to do is keep promoting it, really get the word out, not only about what it means, but about how to engage and who to engage with as we widen this circle of people involved. So we've learned on what it is, why we need it. Morelia, can you tell us how? How do, are we gonna get this? How do we implement it? Oh, I got the easy question. Well, I mean, I speak as an investor and so my particular vertical here is capital, right? One part of the answer to the how is we need to be moving a lot of capital into the for-benefit ecosystem, right? Charlotte was just mentioning that the official aid budget is about 150 million and we have 1.43 million per year from here to 2030 to copper. So one of the primary sort of interventions that we need to create is to attract more private capital into the investment in for-benefit ecosystem. And then alongside of that, of course we needed an enabling policy environment and tax incentives and things that other players need to be bringing on board, government and private sector as well, in order to create the right sort of nurturing ground for for-benefits enterprises to be flourishing everywhere. Farad, do you have other mechanism in place for the how? So, I mean, broadly speaking, if you sort of take an enterprise-centric perspective on this, what we're trying to grow more of in the economy and what is trying to grow in the economy. If you look at sentiments among consumers, investors, employees, managers, millennials, there's overwhelming majority, like there's study after study that comes out that says there's a strong bias to wanting to embed their values and their economic choices. They wanna work for these kinds of companies, they wanna buy from them, they want to invest in them, see if they can, they would do it. But that demand is not met by capacity, there's not sufficient capacity. Why is it if there's so much demand among every stakeholder class that engages in an economy for this class of economic activity, why is there not matching supply? The problem is because the force sector is a nascent, has a nascent ecosystem. So if you wanna start and grow a for-benefit business in your local community, you need to find a lawyer that can help you incorporate. And there have to be laws that allow you to incorporate. You have to find an accountant that can help you create a system that measures not just your financial performance but your social and environmental performance. You have to find investors and capital providers that understand that you're primarily focused on a social and environmental mission and profit is a means to that end, it's not the only end. So finding that ecosystem is incredibly important to your enterprise. So that enterprise being able to get started and succeed. But right now those enterprises have to rely on the ecosystems of either the for-profit sector or the non-profit sector because there is not sufficient ecosystem built around them. But that's changing. So broadly, the how is the same way, capitalism in essence is an ecosystem that's been designed to support the creation and growth of for-profit businesses, right? So economic development, traditional economic development is all about creating the ecosystems so the private actors as investors, as consumers, as entrepreneurs go and create for-profit firms. So we know how to do ecosystem development. We do it everywhere, all the time. So if we just shift that thinking and say, all right, we have an ecosystem that allows for for-profit enterprises to be created and scaled. We have an ecosystem that allows for NGOs to be created and scaled. We recognize as this hybrid landscape of for-benefits, they also need an ecosystem. So the same logic we apply to helping those sectors get formed. We need to apply to the for-benefit sector. And how far along are we in that creation of that ecosystem? That's a great question. I'd say it's decades in the making. So there's lots of, we've been developing social environmental accounting and audit and lots of different metrics and standards or certification schemes, impact investing, social finance, venture philanthropy, lots of blended finance, lots of innovation around how to move capital into this kind of a hybrid space. More than 1600 universities or MBAs programs now teach some kind of a sustainability or social enterprise concentration that numbers probably higher now. So that every piece of that ecosystem has been developing slowly and in a fragmented way for decades. So what's needed now is to basically say, all right, we see this organic emergence, now let's be intentional about it. How do we actually focus this on the needs of the actual for-benefit entrepreneurs as opposed to an ecosystem that's really developed around helping businesses become more socially engaged or nonprofits becoming more commercial? So those are useful to the for-benefit, they're not directly focused on the for-benefit. So I think building on the decades of work that's been done over the next decade, and this is the ambition of our initiative that we're launching at the GFC, if we partner together broadly, if we bring government institutions, we bring corporates, we bring philanthropy, we bring academia, we bring all the different stakeholders of this sector of the economy together and deliberately focus on building that infrastructure, we can do it pretty rapidly. In a decade, if you imagine what happened in the 1990s in Eastern Central Europe when those economies transitioned to market-based economies, over a decade there was a pretty transformative set of changes across that whole region. And things happen much faster now than they did then. So it's entirely possible if we assemble the right sort of stakeholders and organize the right way that over the next decade we can make tremendous progress. And we have to, if this is the key part of the solution to achieving the SDGs, if we are really serious about trillions of dollars worth of private investment and enterprise going towards these development objectives between now and 2030, that means we have to actually make this happen by then. Ambitious goal. So before final statement, I'm just gonna open the floor for questions. If there's any questions for our panelists, and Mike will come to you, just need to raise your hand. Yeah, I understand the big picture goals here. I guess I'm still a little murky on this. What are some specific examples of enterprises that fall in this intermediate space that are new or different from what already exists from a non-profit doing some kind of commercial activity or a company doing some kind of social good? Well, famous ones would include like Tom Shoes or Kind Bars. The companies where the founder upon founding it built in social purpose from the beginning. A lot of different, there are a lot of social enterprises around health now. If I look at the non-profit side, there's a group that works in Myanmar called Proximity Designs that has really scaled its work a lot by building in market-based approaches with the farmers that they're working with. I mean, there's a long list, but those are just some examples. Maybe you wanna add something to your enterprise. So the interesting thing about the four-benefit concept is that it's a little bit more open than what we know as social enterprises, right? You can have something like Newman's Own being a four-benefit or you can have a rural distribution, inclusive distribution network in rural Bangladesh that is scaling up and is something that generates cash to fuel its own growth. That is a four-benefit enterprise. So I think that one of the reasons why I like this framework is that it opens up our understanding of how businesses can operate with the focus of impact generation that moves us from this immediate connection to a particular non-profit generating revenue or a frontier market enterprise, but also, you know, Tom Shoes or, you know, some might say maybe Ben and Jerry's. I don't know, it's a four-benefit. You hinted at what's gonna be needed over the next 10 years and what you'll be launching. Maybe you're getting to this, but I'd love a little more clarity on exactly who the partners are that are involved, which of course includes all of you, but others as well. And I'd be particularly interested to hear, I represent DevX and we write about the global development community. Any kind of call to action for others who might get involved, especially from the quote unquote traditional development sector? I can speak to the couple other partners. So part of this launch today is this broad initiative, four sector development initiative that we're doing in partnership with the Global Future Council on International Governance, Public Private Cooperation, and Sustainable Development. Well done, that's why. That's awesome. So the GFC has about 30 members that work across the board in different institutions. So within the GFC, there's a number of organizations that are working on developing specific four sector initiatives, but we're also broadening it beyond that. So in our GFC, we have the Iberra American General Secretariat. They're basically launching a four sector development initiative across 22 countries in Latin America, and Iberra, and Peninsula. And basically research, policy development, awareness building, place-based hubs, sort of the whole gamut. Oxfam is another partner that's launching something called the Future of Business Initiative, I think, with a funny acronym. So, and they're looking at a whole portfolio of projects from research to helping large, multi-nationals incorporate four benefits in their supply chain. So they're announcing that today. And then beyond that, we're in conversations with, I probably shouldn't name any names just now, but a number of international institutions, development organizations, and businesses that are working on launching initiatives within this broad platform. So the four sector development initiative is basically a platform where all these organizations come together and collaborate on moving different four sector efforts forward. And to the extent that you've got policy being developed in Africa, and in Latin America, and in Asia, there's obviously a need to look at what the cross-cutting issues are and the ways that they can collaborate. It's early days. So, and the membership that I refer to when I talk about the OECD DAC is 30 governments, countries, and before, you know, a call to action is a call to action of please come along and do this. We have an entry point, which is we want members to explore and understand how can this benefit donors? And in what way can they engage? So my kind of call to action today is, if you will, to me, to convene the roundtables that I, thanks to the OECD DAC, have the opportunity to convene with partners to explore this. And I foresee member countries who would like to do this, also because they need this kind of language around this fourth sector, because, well, yes, there are examples already today that would fit in the fourth sector, but there's no real push. And some of the examples we have today, they kind of feel, well, where do we belong? Do we belong there? And when you think about that, you're never somebody's priority. You're never really prioritized. And this initiative will enable the focus on something we want to see more of. My members are looking for ways to work with private sector and multi-stakeholder approach. And sometimes they meet with the Oxfam and Care and others in that meeting and private sector in that meeting. And this initiative is around something that will be concrete, something that actually, where really the stakeholders need to be in one room and discuss something concrete. And I see that the OECD as well can perhaps play a role when it comes to the policies and the tools that can help this. But it's not gonna go overnight. It's gonna take a while. Can I just add to that, just on a call to action? I think I see it in three ways. One is there is so much urgency to address the problems, the challenges that we're facing. I really think there's too much complacency. At an event like this, most of us agree on what to do, but we have to take it out. So there's a lot of urgency. The second thing is it requires new and better policies, new and better practices, and much more public awareness and public demand for these new forms of business and nonprofits. So I think that we have to push it that way. And then again, I think the sustainable development goals, it's a fantastic framework for us to use that really does connect us across the globe. So I think that for me, the call to action has to again, weave together these different elements. And we have the kind of partners here that can make it happen, but we really have to scale this quickly. Okay, this may be a provocative question in some ways, but given the need for more of these types of enterprises, shouldn't every corporation have some kind of mission like this in its charter or something? I mean, what is the purpose of a strictly for-profit capitalistic enterprise that doesn't have a purpose towards whatever, achieving an SDG or whatever other social good. We need that too. We need that too. The early corporate charters actually did have a mission embedded in them a few hundred years ago. So we've kind of evolved into a different space. But if it's a free market and there are lots of consumers and managers and entrepreneurs and investors who want to operate in a for-benefit way, we should allow them a level playing field. It shouldn't be 10 times harder. Should be at least as hard or as easy as a traditional profit maximizing and centric entity. But if they're actors who want to, whose primary focus is that, then that's their focus. I mean, so it's not a matter like whether people should or shouldn't. It's a matter of there's overwhelming demand signals coming from all actors across the economy and we don't have the infrastructure to support that model of activity. And you know, there's a guy called Buck Mr. Fuller. I don't know if you know him yet, right, Buck? Buck, he says that if you want to fix a system, you're better off creating a new one that makes the old on obsolete. So there's a secret plan here too. Not so secret, secret plan. So as we're wrapping up, I'd like to invite the panelists for final statement. Yeah, I guess I would sort of echo the call to action from Heather and Charlotte and say, so this is an open platform for collaboration. The only way we're gonna get to the sort of scale that's needed with the urgency that's called for is if lots are different. Literally, there's a role for everyone to play. Everyone is either a consumer or a parent or a voter or an investor or an employee. We all have roles in the economy and if we want an economy that's more aligned with our values in all those different capacities where we make decisions every day, if we align those decisions with the kinds of models that we want to see proliferating in the economy, that'll really accelerate this transformation much, much more quickly. So my call to action is just find a way to engage to align your economic choices with the kinds of products and services and firms that are aligned with your values. And I think that a lot of young people who can choose who to work for, they are asking for purpose. So I think what we enable young people to do is to recognize that there is a fourth sector there which is talking to me about, this is the way things can be done and when we can be able to demonstrate even more clearly than today that this is what we're talking about, I think we will see both companies starting in that direction but also push inside companies. I mean, I'm from Sweden. I know how H&M is trying to work with women's rights and really engaging women's in their own future of being a worker. Where does that fit in in this model? Is it a fourth sector thing or is it a company that's conscious about how it does it business? I think this model that we are exploring here will also trigger the measurements. What are we asking for? What is good for workers in the fourth sector? Well, how will that perhaps push other companies who not necessarily see themselves as part of fourth sector and be a kind of a change agent for a broader corporate sector than what we're talking about here today? So I see a lot of opportunity. Well, I would have said what they said so I'll just do a build on that to say that I think that governments around the world, if they wanna tackle issues of unemployment and inequality and discrimination and modern day slavery, et cetera, having instituting stronger fourth sector policies enabling this sector to grow is a really good way to do that, to really shift more social purpose into the whole private sector. And I think I'm gonna go also with a call to action to my particular cohort which is the world of investors, investment. For benefit enterprises behave differently than regular enterprises and they operate in different contexts very often in frontier markets. So they need financial partners that will understand and offer them products and services that are actually helpful for their growth and for their scaling of their impact. So my call to action is to get a conversation going with investors around what does it mean to be a for benefit investor? We at Care Enterprises are a for benefit enterprise. We are a for profit subsidiary of a very large nonprofit. So by nature of for benefit and we are for benefit investing in for benefits. So we would like to, it's certainly through the platform of the first sector development initiative start a conversation around what does it mean to be a financial partner for this growing sector and for these entrepreneurs who are true innovators and that hopefully are the ones that are gonna be leading us into a much more agreeable prosperous future. So I'd like to thank my panelists for joining us today. You online and in the room for the launch of the four sector development initiative. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.