The cover photo for this issue shows a single bright-green shoot sprouting from the unpromising bark of a mature tree. It’s an evocative image, but perhaps not quite right for social capital markets, the focus of the September special feature. What the cover should show is hundreds of tiny shoots bursting up all over the place, thickly in some parts of the world, in ones and twos in other places. An act of faith is needed to imagine them all coming together to form coherent and effective systems for channelling much-needed funds to social purposes.