Social lending is a type of borrowing, quite different to the normal personal loans and credit cards offered by financial institutions. Although it does involve a loan, it is not monitored by a traditional financial institution. It sounds like it could be a loan from someone you know and in a sense it is similar to that.

The personal loans are usually provided through a company, but they are not a financial one. The company just acts as a mediator between the lender and the borrower. Often, the lender and the borrower might know each other and they use the peer lending company to make sure that things are sorted out properly with regards to the repayment terms. Sometimes the lender and borrower just know each other through a social networking site or in some cases they do not know each other.

There has been a long existing, alleged trade-off between return on investment and allocation of financial capital towards positive environmental and/or social impact. Investing doesn't need to be so one sided. The world witnesses do investors that are good, pursuing a strategy called Impact investing today.

According to the Global Impact Purchasing Network - a 501 organization dedicated to increasing the growth and efficiency of impact investing - impact investments are: