Impact Investing News

Most of us dedicated to sustainability tend to think about it terms of the big issues – climate change, food scarcity, clean water and other global environmental and social issues. After returning from Generation Investment Management’s recent conference, my perception about creating sustainable businesses and systems evolved markedly. It turns out the highest profile issue […]

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund – founded in 1940 by the five sons of John D. Rockefeller Jr. – made headlines a couple years ago when its announced it would divest its endowment of fossil fuels. Breaking with its own oil legacy was part of the fund’s decade-long commitment to align the impact of its $860 million endowment with […]

SOCAP: the place where the citizens of Impact Land gather to discuss … what exactly? And who are these people, anyway? This week on Returns on Investment our roving panelists deconstruct the annual Social Capital Markets conference, scene of a thousand meetings, hundreds of panels and dozens of parties. This week’s episode brought our three regulars […]

Conventional wisdom says investors focus on financial returns, and philanthropists address environmental and social concerns. Impact investing, combines value and values to provide social and environmental impact in addition to a financial return. Impact investing has the potential to change the world. According to a Forbes guest editorial by Sir Ronald Cohen, Chairman of the […]

Highlights and tidbits from the Social Capital Markets conference in San Francisco: Leveraging FOMO to drive institutional change.  It seems big banks and venture capitalists may be as susceptible as teenagers to the Fear of Missing Out. James Rantanen of Deutsche Bank had been working since 2008 to build a platform for the bank’s wealth […]

Over 200 million dollars are lost to food waste every year. Spoiled, unwanted, imperfect food that businesses pay to grow, package, transport, refrigerate and throw-away uneaten. American agriculturalists are shifting paradigms from paying to manage waste to saving money eliminating waste such as developing “co-products” and circular products from material that was once fodder landfill. […]

I got the call from the White House, in May 2014. “We’re going to have some major new commitments of impact investment capital at the meeting in June. Would you be interested in helping us track how the money is spent?” What do you say to a call like that when you run an impact […]

The term “unicorn” was coined by Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures to describe private companies that have achieved a post-money valuation of $1 billion or more. Originally, these companies were scarce, magical and elusive. As of August 31, 2016, according the CrunchBase Unicorn Leaderboards, there are now 191 unicorns. In my impact investing practice at […]

The opening plenary panel of SOCAP16 will kick off the conference with insightful considerations on the “how” and “why” of social capital markets and the critical, and equal, importance of both. One of the leaders in the field who will speak on the plenary is Ed Dugger III, a pioneering impact investment leader with many years […]

Mitch Kapor and his wife Freada — along with Kapor Capital and Kapor Center for Social Impact — are giants in the field of impact investing and philanthropy. They are a serious force in Oakland as philanthropists and investors, and they are paving the way for so many others, including Better Ventures, who recently hosted […]

The preamble to the global Sustainable Development Goals envision a world “in which humanity lives in harmony with nature and in which wildlife and other living species are protected.” In practice, however, economic development – and impact investing – has tended to prioritize humans over animals. In this episode of the Returns on Investment podcast, […]

Water is returned to Australia’s Murray River through a Nature Conservancy Water Sharing Investment Partnership, 2016. (Photo by Brian Richter) Posted for media use. By Sunny Lewis  STOCKHOLM, Sweden, September 1, 2016 (Maximpact.com) – Water scarcity is a top risk to global prosperity and ecological integrity. But creative impact investment solutions, such as Water Sharing […]

As Silicon Valley has grown in influence in both the business world and the broader culture, a growing chorus of critics have leveled a similar critique: Why are some of the world’s most brilliant innovators and deep-pocketed investors focusing so much of their time and resources on solving petty problems, while ignoring countless more pressing concerns? Ross Baird, executive director of Village Capital […]

In more than a decade as a lender to small farmers and agricultural co-ops in Africa and Latin America, Root Capital has gained a reputation as an effective organization that has delivered genuine impact in a tough sector. In 2012, however, Root hit a speed bump. It was just a temporary breach of a technical […]

Why do we think impact investors will become increasingly active in backing solutions to global challenges? Because those investments represent some of the greatest wealth generating opportunities of our time. The trillions in investments needed to stave off the catastrophic effects of climate change, for example, will also underwrite the rebuilding of a new, clean […]

Editor’s note: NextBillion is collaborating with ImpactAlpha to highlight coverage of the top stories, leaders and trends in impact investing. In periodic NextBillion posts, their team will share the key stories and market activities that have crossed their desks in recent weeks. When global leaders launched the Millennium Development Goals in 2000 there was no well-developed way […]

Melinda Gates was in London four years ago to help launch a global campaign. The audacious 2020 goal: to reach more than half of the estimated 225 million women worldwide who want to avoid pregnancy, yet are not using modern contraceptives. “We must continue to help our partners provide affordable contraceptives at the necessary scale […]

‘Follow the money’ is a good guide for tracking current trends in investing, but for hints about what may be coming next, ‘Follow the people.’ So it’s worth noting that the chief investment officer for one of Australia’s biggest pension fund is leaving his perch managing $71 billion in assets to join Leapfrog Investments, which earlier this year […]

In late June, the Second Vatican Conference on Impact Investing (VIIC) brought together leaders from the Catholic Church and impact investment communities to discuss the role of impact investing for the poor. Because the Vatican conference occurred during the Extraordinary Year of Mercy established by Pope Francis, the VIIC chose the theme “Making the Year […]

Without a doubt, Nancy Pfund is one of the leading impact investors of our day. While not yet a household name, “over the last decade, Pfund has quietly built a reputation as the go-to venture capitalist for companies looking to make a social impact” (NY Times). With early investments and tremendous successes in clean energy […]

The ImPact, a new investor network aiming to normalize impact investing among the world’s wealthiest families, concluded its series of asset class primers with the fifth primer: Private Equity and Impact Investing. Families can generate commercial financial returns and address pressing global challenges by making private equity investments. “Investors seeking to capitalize on the business […]

Increasing urbanization in the developing world, resource scarcity, population growth, and climate change are creating investment opportunities in real assets. “Real asset impact investments provide families a physical, experiential alignment of their values and their investments,” write the author of Real Assets and Impact Investing, the latest report from The ImPact, a new investor network aiming […]

Editor’s note: NextBillion is collaborating with ImpactAlpha to highlight coverage of the top stories, leaders and trends in impact investing. In periodic NextBillion posts, their team will share the key stories and market activities that have crossed their desks in recent weeks.   Summer of Impact British voters have thrown a stick through the spokes […]

Families looking for innovation and entrepreneurship can invest in mission-driven early-stage startup companies , either directly or through a fund manager. In the third part of its asset class series the ImPact explores the “sexy” world of high-risk, high-reward and yes, potentially high-impact early-stage impact investing. Here’s are a few highlights of the report: Direct Investment […]