Final answer:
Social investment is a multifaceted strategy aimed at generating financial returns, creating social impact, ensuring environmental sustainability, and fostering community development, often yielding a social rate of return.
Step-by-step explanation:
Social investment is a strategy that encompasses a range of objectives. It focuses on creating social impact, achieving environmental sustainability, and promoting community development. The concept behind social investment is to generate both a financial return and a measurable, beneficial social or environmental impact. Investments are made with the understanding that they will produce social benefits, such as improving the quality of life for community members or advancing educational opportunities, thus increasing the social capital of a region. Furthermore, social investments are inclined to produce a social rate of return, where the benefits primarily go to society, such as through providing free education.