ImpactAlpha

Smarter Money The idea is that payments to lenders will get more funds interested in delivering social impact Photo credit: REUTERS Social Impact Incentives, or more succinctly, SIINC, are financial payouts to organizations and social ventures that meet proven social performance targets. The SIINC model has been tested, with the Swiss development agency putting up the cash, […]

2030 Finance Rockefeller Foundation’s ‘Zero Gap’ portfolio of financial innovations with billion-dollar potential By Dennis Price and David Bank To get to a trillion dollars, much less tens of trillions, you first have to get to $1 billion. At the Rockefeller Foundation, the hunt is on for 10 innovative financial structures that can mobilize at least $1 […]

Smarter Money As a SOCAP media partner, ImpactAlpha is pleased to be able to offer a $250 discount through Sept. 29. Register now. Photo credit: SOCAP The Social Capital Markets conference, or SOCAP, convenes on the San Francisco waterfront for the 10th time October 10–13. Organizers have turned over a portion of the conference to guest curators to […]

The Brief Dreamer economics, big biz needs small biz, driving financial inclusion, Asia’s sustainable food boom Sept. 5, 2017 Shek Kip Mei Market, Hong Kong l Photo by Natalie Ng Greetings, ImpactAlpha readers! #TalkingPoints: Dreamers How Dreamers boost the American economy. The Trump administration’s plan to cancel the program that allows about 800,000 U.S. immigrants who arrived as […]

The Brief Aug. 28, 2017 San Miguel de Allende, Mexico l Photo by Jezar Greetings, ImpactAlpha readers! We’re ba-a-ack. #Featured: Open Mic Impact Management: How the right data can drive performance for people and the planet. All investments have an impact. But what type of impact and how does it compare? Bridges Fund Management facilitated the Impact Management […]

2030 New data sheds light on popular (and not so popular) SDGs John Legend l Photo credit: GlobalGoals.org Impact investors are increasingly adopting the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals as a guide to impact and opportunity. Yet little is known about which of the goals are getting the most attention. A new report from InvestorFlow, the fast-growing […]

Smarter Money Six in 10 Millennial investors say they’ve made at least one sustainable investment in the last year Growing interest in sustainable investing is turning into action. The trend is especially pronounced among Millennial investors, according to a new survey from the Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainable Investing. In the survey, “Sustainability Signals,” 86% of active […]

The Brief Friends of ImpactAlpha, dance incubator, uncharted food access, sustainability signals, bitcoin’s remittance boom Aug. 10, 2017 Photo by Nadim Merrikh Greetings, FOIAs! #Featured: Editor’s Note Dear Friends of ImpactAlpha. The new ImpactAlpha is wrapping up its first season and gearing up for a breakthrough fall and new year. As we head into a two-week August recess, […]

The Brief Impact ETFs, tech for the visually-impaired, education’s OpenTable, inclusion through inclusion, dark shadows Aug. 2, 2017 Greetings, ImpactAlpha readers! What will impact investing look like in 2030? Our friends at the Global Impact Investing Network are working on a roadmap to accelerate impact investing toward the next stage of market development. You can have your […]

The Brief Chan-Zuckerberg’s portfolio, J.P. Morgan’s clean billions, Patamar’s livelihood thesis, care-bots, Brief Quiz No. №25 Jul. 28, 2017 Photo by Kimberly Farmer Hello ImpactAlpha readers! #Featured: ImpactAlpha Original How Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg are investing their social-change billions. If and when the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative becomes one of the biggest private social-change funders in history, these early […]

Better Data Jean Case, our CEO, issued a simple clarion call in the Stanford Social Innovation Review last month: #ShareYourData. The time is now. The impact investing field has grown leaps and bounds since the Global Impact Investment Network first started tracking the growth of the field in 2010. Networks like Toniic and The ImPact […]

The Brief Jul. 27, 2017 Hello ImpactAlpha readers! #Featured: ImpactAlpha Original Peterborough social impact bond becomes a proof point. Fewer prisoners are returning to prison in Peterborough, England. That represents a success for the city, the ex-offenders, and the investors who backed the world’s first social impact bond, which financed a comprehensive post-release program. Social impact […]

The Brief Blending finance for global goals, responsible robo-advisors, U.S. impact investing alliance, future of transportation in the U.K. Jul. 26, 2017 Rua Líbero Badaró, São Paulo, Brazil l Photo by Guilherme Cunha Hello ImpactAlpha readers! #Featured: ImpactAlpha Original Blending finance to unlock capital for the 2030 global goals. To build its $150 million private equity fund […]

Inclusive Economics More than $9 million available for borrowing for refugees Photo credit: : Kiva The micro-lending platform’s latest fund is making more than $9 million available for borrowing by refugees and host countries like Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey. There are 22.5 million refugees spread around the world; five million from the crisis in Syria. “Beyond direct relief, there needs […]

Smarter Money Former Gov. Deval Patrick: ‘We’re being closely followed, so we owe it to the field to do it well.’ Former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, manageing director, Bain Capital Double Impact The tipoff that impact investing is indeed reaching a new stage in the capital markets came when Deval Patrick described the $390 million Bain Capital […]

Inclusive Prosperity The GSG honors Philadelphia community-development finance institution that connected capital markets and low-income communities Philadelphia, PA l Photo credit: Sam Horine For decades, Don Hinkle-Brown has fantasized about having access to the public markets to raise capital for childcare centers and charter schools, grocery stores and health clinics, energy efficiency upgrades and small businesses […]

Smarter Money Equities and fixed-income products with high ESG ratings “have better risk-return ratios” Photo credit: AP The world’s second-largest reinsurer is done with legacy indexes that fail to account for companies’ performance on environmental, social and governance, or ESG, issues. The Swiss firm is already 90 percent of way towards shifting its portfolio to track ESG […]

Smarter Money ‘United Nations’ of impact investing in Chicago draws national advisory boards from 16 countries Chicago, United States l Photo credit: Austin Neill On the heels of the G20 meeting in Hamburg will come a summit of the Impact 16 in Chicago. That’s the number of countries, with the recent addition of Finland and Argentina, […]

Smarter Money Mainstream asset owners are on a journey to make their investments a powerful force for good — let’s welcome them. New York, New York l Photo credit: Anders Jildén In the impact investing community, there is continuing talk about whether “the big tent” — created by the diversity of strategies and approaches pursued by investors– is too big. There are […]

Inclusive Economics The venture capital fund is expanding into healthcare, agriculture, and housing Vishal Mehta, Co-founder Lok Capital Gurgaon-based Lok invests in financial institutions serving low-income Indians, and is expanding into healthcare, agriculture, and housing. Lok has exited four companies in the past 12 months, enabling the firm to return $65 million in principal from its second fund, […]

Climate Finance The fund is looking to back twenty projects in Africa, Latin America and Asia with up to $100 million each Climate Investor One was conceived in 2014 and incubated by the Global Innovation Lab for Climate Finance. The fund is looking to back twenty 30- to 60-megawatt projects in Africa, Latin America and Asia with […]

Smarter Money All 37 providers surveyed by Toniic expect their business to grow this year Impact wealth managers, impact investment advisors and managers, investment consultants, management consultants, financial advisors, family offices — an army of service providers is responding to growing client demand for impact investing advice (see, “Smoothing the flow of impact investing with lane markers and […]

Smarter Money The investment screening theme is the tenth one to be added to the impact investing robo-advisor’s platform Photo credit: Starbucks OpenInvest has added a #WithRefugees investment screen to its impact investing platform. OpenInvest allows investors to back publicly-listed companies that have forward-thinking policies towards refugees, including Starbucks, which has committed to hiring 10,000 […]

Smarter Money SOCAPs Good Capital Project seeks to streamline an unruly field Detail from Jonny Goldstein’s visualization of the Good Capital Project discussion With so many frameworks and schemas, the fragmentation of impact investing continues to frustrate. The latest to try their hand at coordination is today’s convening in New York of the Good Capital Project, […]

Highlights from The Economist’s London impact investing event The Economist magazine put on its second impact investment gathering in a London still reeling from this week’s Grenfell Tower fire and recent terrorist attacks. Takeaways from the event: “Increasingly ‘impact’ is a measure of externalities embedded. So in the future all investing will be impact,” said […]

Inclusive Economics Employee owners are less likely to be laid off and are 92% wealthier Arizona Stingley, New Era Windows Cooperative l Photo credit: The Working World Employee-owned firms reduce the disconnect between workers and owners, but they still need significant investment to scale. Investment opportunities in employee ownership are limited but emerging, says a new report […]

The Brief Jun. 13, 2017 Port-au-Prince, Haiti Greetings, ImpactAlpha readers! #Featured: The Brief №100 Blow out the candles. Today’s 100th issue of The Brief is itself a #Signal. When we launched ImpactAlpha, skeptics doubted deal activity in the impact investment marketplace would be robust enough to warrant daily coverage. You put that to rest. Since January alone, […]

Smarter Money The fund wants to improve due diligence, offer blended finance, and lower transaction costs Photo credit: Mike Wilson The Connect Fund has launched to build out impact investing infrastructure. The £1.8 million ($2.3 million) fund, a partnership between Barrow Cadbury Trust and the Access foundation, will invest in collaborative initiatives to improve due diligence, […]

Ford Foundation president, Darren Walker, broke through a barrier of sorts recently with the announcement the foundation would commit $1 billion from its roughly $14 billion endowment to so-called mission-related investments (see, “Ford Foundation to tap endowment for $1 billion to fight injustice and inequality“). That it would make news that a foundation, especially one […]

Congress will soon begin debate on the recently released Trump Administration “budget blueprint.” This blueprint includes a dizzying array of choices that lay waste to efforts aimed at fighting poverty, improving education and health for vulnerable populations, and engaging in smart global development. One of the most inexplicable proposals included in the “budget blueprint” is […]

Credit guarantees, typically provided by philanthropic organizations, are designed to encourage new investors or commercial capital to enter “risky” or undercapitalized investment sectors. Although not a new tool in impact investing, guarantees are “extremely underutilized,” according to a new report from the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN). Recent examples show their promise: A $5 million […]

Farm-raised fish every year devour 30 million tons of wild-caught fish worldwide. With seafood consumption hitting record levels in recent years – more than 20 kilograms per person per year, according to the latest FAO research – it will take 20 to 30 new feed products to achieve a sustainable seafood industry this century, says […]

Full Harvest, in San Francisco, has raised $2 million to support online sales of “ugly” produce—the goods grocers consider unfit for supermarket sales. The funding round was led by Wireframe Ventures and backed by BBG Ventures, Early Impact Ventures, Impact Engine, VC Radicle, and several angel investors. Founder Christine Mosley, formerly with fresh juice company Organic […]

Vermont Works has raised $50 million for the state’s economic and job growth. Vermont Works is targeting the state’s growth-stage companies. “When companies are out for growth-stage capital, that’s when the availability of capital in Vermont tends to stumble,” Robert Zulkoski, a co-founder of thefund, said in an interview. The new fund has made four investments, […]

Generate Capital has launched a $250 million financing facility for solar+storage projects. The advent of cost-effective batteries for electricity storage is making the numbers work for an increasing number of commercial and industrial solar installations (see “Energy storage takes shape with financing for Southern California battery installations”). Also helpful: rebates for such projects from the state […]

The response to our call last week to ‘name your favorite impact investor’ demonstrated the breadth of the talent pool under the big tent of impact investing. Many respondents ducked the question because they couldn’t pick a single favorite; only a few nominees were named more than once. The responses spanned asset classes and geographies […]

Economic inequality creates social and political unrest. It also creates long-term systemic risk for investors. How can available investment strategies address inequities based on age, race, gender and geography? Learn about investing to address income inequality in a complimentary one-hour webinar on April 18th at noon ET. Hosted by Phil Kirshman, Cornerstone Capital’s investment chief, […]

The economic platform of the Movement for Black Lives includes demands for progressive tax policy, job creation, environmental restoration and the reallocation of federal, state and local budgets from incarceration to education, employment and restorative justice. The broad set of principles reimagines black communities’ relationship with land and economic development and argues for systemic policy […]

At last week’s Skoll World Forum in Oxford, England, the music icon doubled down on his diss of impact investing as an excuse “for good people to do bad deals” (see video). If we want to really have an impact, “we can’t be hippy-ish about this. This isn’t camp,” he said in an interview with […]

A team of MBA students from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management that proposed a low-interest loan fund for India’s 400,000 low-fee private schools took first place in last week’s Kellogg Morgan Stanley Sustainable Investing Challenge. Now in its seventh year, the tone at the finals in New York suggested the tide is shifting towards […]