Connecting Capital to Communities: How Investors Harness Financial Markets for Essential Social Infrastructure

This highly interactive hybrid program will bring together up to 60 participants from across the globe for two online sessions and a four-day residential program at Schloss Leopoldskron, home of Salzburg Global Seminar, in Salzburg, Austria.

• Connect to a living, international community of outstanding leaders committed to investments for health, well-being, and climate resilience.
• Take inspiration and learnings from across the globe and gain foresight.
• Develop relationships for coalition building across organizational, professional, and national boundaries.
• Have open access to a vast network of Salzburg Global Fellows working on similar pursuits.
• Share promising practices and expertise, and draw on the group’s collective intelligence and experience to tackle challenges you face and leverage important opportunities.
• Receive and offer peer mentoring on ways to incubate, replicate, adapt, and scale good practices.
• Engage in a candid, safe, and open exchange with peers under the Chatham House Rule.
• Enjoy time and space to disconnect and reflect from a wider ecosystem perspective.

This program will involve investors, policymakers, and practitioners with a role in delivering capital to communities for clean water, durable food supply and production, and building and preserving quality, affordable housing.

Clusters of participants will be selected from four to six countries. Each cluster will include decision-makers from the public and private sectors, policy, philanthropy, and community representatives.

Participants will span from public and social policy; federal and local government; investors, financial institutions, academia; the business and service sector; community-based advocacy groups; and the media.

Participants will address the following questions:

• What is the future of investments in essential public infrastructure (e.g., housing, food systems, water) for marginalized places? Where do we have opportunities for accelerating  progress?
• What kinds of investment do communities need, and what barriers prevent investment from meeting those needs?
• What financial and non-financial “enabling conditions” help to support the flow of capital (e.g., policy, monetary/tax incentives)?
• How can an investable pipeline be built in order to attract investment?
• How can we shift the resources, relationships, power, and the purpose of capital to support investments in essential public infrastructure such as affordable and quality housing, food, and water?
• What innovations, tools, policies, and strategies have effectively unlocked capital for essential social infrastructure (e.g., housing, food systems, and water) in marginalized communities? How and who is benefiting? What new learnings and innovations are emerging? What challenges and bottlenecks are being experienced? How can these issues be overcome?
• What are the immediate opportunities for partnership, policy, and other actions and collaboration across sectors and geographies?
• In what ways can communities gain more control over the capital they need for investment in what matters to them? How can the voices of other people, perspectives, and priorities influence decisions about investment which affect their lives? And how might this lead us toward  new and better systems, which are so urgently needed?

This program will seek to:

• Exchange best practices, strategies tools, lessons learned, and opportunities.
• Seed innovative and impactful approaches through collective international and cross-sector exchange.
• Shift mindsets, spur new thinking, and develop ongoing networking and collaborations among participants and the institutions they represent.
• Co-create action plans designed and agreed by participants to take forward as appropriate at community, city, or national levels and leverage the project’s global scope to influence public or private sector policies, programs, practices or public opinion.
• Capture innovations, strategies, learnings, and opportunities across various communication channels, including through a media partnership, Salzburg Global programs and networks, and participant-suggested dissemination channels.

Who Should Apply?

You should apply if you...

• are an investor, policymaker, practitioner, expert, or young leader with a role in delivering capital to communities for clean water, durable food supply, and production and building and preserving quality, affordable housing.
• bring the experience of working on exceptional cases of impactful or promising (or research on) interventions steering capital market investments into the above-mentioned essential social infrastructures.
• are interested and open to exploring new ways of approaching complex "wicked" issues.
• are strongly committed to engaging actively with a community of peers and experts.
• deeply committed to building equitable, inclusive, and healthy communities
• available between June 18 and 23, 2023, and committed to attending the in-person, immersive four-and-a-half-day residential meeting in Salzburg.

How to Apply?

Fill out our brief application online (a five-minute activity) by April 7, 2023.

To help you prepare, here's what to expect from Salzburg Global's application portal. Note our recommended guidance for applying to this program. Responses should be short (1,000 character max.)

1. Describe your vision for how positive transformation could occur in your field.
   
   In your response, share how you would use this program and network of 50 global practitioners to better connect capital to community for greater health, well-being, and climate resilience, especially in marginalized communities.
    
2. Describe an example of a new idea, innovation, strategy, or good practice which you implemented to address a challenge in the field of this program.
   
   In your response, share a concrete case study and details on the proven impact or potential it has for delivering capital to communities for clean water, durable food supply and production, and building and preserving quality, affordable housing for marginalized communities. What makes this case study an important global example (e.g., the scalability of the intervention, the transformational impact, sustainability of the impact or model, the effectiveness or innovative potential to improve health, well-being, and climate resilience)? For applicants who are experts in the field, please share examples of your work, e.g., frameworks, research, or the latest approaches, and its proven impact or potential influence.
    
3. Describe how participating in this program will help you meet your personal and/or professional goals.
    
4. Share a bio, CV/resume, or video describing your professional experience.

Selection Process

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling admission. We will select applications based on the most exceptional case presented and the diversity of context represented. Our team may get in touch for further information on your application and will inform applicants of the status of their application by April. 

If you have any questions about the application process, please contact Charlotte Mueer, Program Manager, Health, Salzburg Global Seminar, and/or Mary Helen Pombo, Program Director, Health, Salzburg Global Seminar.