Social Enterprise Law Trust, Public Benefit and Capital Markets

Social enterprises represent a new kind of venture, dedicated to pursuing profits for owners and benefits for society. Social Enterprise Law provides tools that will allow them to raise the capital they need to flourish.

Social Enterprise Law weaves innovation in contract and corporate governance into powerful protections against insiders sacrificing goals such as environmental sustainability in the pursuit of short-term profits. Creating a stable balance between financial returns and public benefits will allow social entrepreneurs to team up with impact investors that share their vision of a double bottom line. Brakman Reiser and Dean show how novel legal technologies can allow social enterprises to access capital markets, including unconventional sources such as crowdfunding. With its straightforward insights into complex areas of the law, the book shows how a social mission can even be shielded from the turbulence of an acquisition or bankruptcy. It also shows why, as the metrics available to measure the impact of social missions on individuals and communities become more sophisticated, such legal innovations will continue to become more robust.

By providing a comprehensive survey of the U.S. laws and a bold vision for how legal institutions across the globe could be reformed, this book offers new insights and approaches to help social enterprises raise the capital they need to flourish. It offers a rich guide for students, entrepreneurs, investors, and practitioners.

Professor Brakman Reiser has been teaching and writing about social enterprise and nonprofit law as a member of the Brooklyn Law School faculty since 2001. She was an Associate Reporter for the American Law Institute's Principles of the Law of Nonprofit Organizations and is a graduate of Harvard Law School.

Professor Dean joined the faculty at Brooklyn Law School after practicing transactional law at two global law firms. He is a co-author of forthcoming book Federal Taxation of Corporations and Corporate Transactions and is a graduate of Yale Law School