Telling the impact investment story through digital media: an Indonesian case study

ABSTRACT

In a marketplace still dominated by arcane legislative and regulatory architectures and by legacy communication processes, social enterprises are finding it difficult to secure funding. This qualitative research paper examined narratives of two entities: an Indonesian social enterprise and a Singaporean-based organisation that connects social enterprises with impact investors and adopts a multi-modal (across-method) research framework that includes both primary and secondary research. This paper develops a set of preliminary propositions regarding strategic communication via newly emergent digital conduits and the power of that tailored communication to positively impact the development of Southeast Asian social enterprises. The findings suggest that while much remains to be done before full digital integration is achieved, particular approaches (facilitating seamless and open digital communication between social enterprises and impact investors) are seeing social enterprises secure funding while contributing to the maturation of the social investment marketplace.

KEYWORDS:

• Communication
• digital
• Indonesia
• social
• enterprise
• social
• impact

Acknowledgements

Without the help of Singaporean-based Impact Investment Exchange (IIX), IIX Foundation (formerly known as Shujog), and Indonesian-based East Bali Cashews, this paper would have not have come to fruition. Thanks also goes to Philip Thomas Roundy (2013) whose dissertation and framework shed light on how differences in entrepreneurs’ narratives are associated with differences in resource acquisition.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. ANGIN is an Indonesian network of 55 angel investors (ANGIN, 2016). The organisation name ‘ANGIN’ translates to wind in Indonesian (Cambridge translate, 2017).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Paul Ryder

Dr Paul Ryder is a commercial strategist and Lecturer in Media in the School of Arts and Media at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia where he teaches commercial, advertising, and communication strategy. He is interested in how deep-seated principles of military strategy manifest in response to a range of contemporary problems and is developing a theory of strategic trilateration whereby problematics are interrogated and remediated through the particularised application of abstract intersections.

Joanna Vogeley

Joanna Vogeley is a research student at Macquarie Graduate School of Management – MGSM in Sydney Australia where she specialises in social entrepreneurship and digital communication. Joanna’s research investigates digital communication channels across Indonesian social enterprises and examines how digital communication bridges development and finance.