After a long march toward mainstream acceptance, many in impact investing are claiming victory. The industry is garnering attention at major publications like The Economist, and recently celebrated the emergence of a star-studded $2 billion fund. Meanwhile, studies have proliferated supporting the idea that you can earn market rate returns while making a meaningful difference in the world, and investors have taken note: The GIIN’s 2016 Annual Impact Investor Survey states that 84 percent of survey respondents were targeting risk-adjusted market rate returns or close to market rate returns.
However, if your focus is emerging markets enterprises that can have an impact on people living in poverty, a recent blog by Ceniarth Capital said it best: “Those of us actively allocating capital to fragile enterprises in developing markets recognize that those people who promise comfortable market rate returns while solving global poverty are the equivalent of diet gurus promising that one can lose weight while eating limitless amounts of chocolate cake.”
In a report launched by Oxfam and Sumerian Partners today, we argue that it’s time to look at impact investing differently; to start with a focus on the needs of the businesses working to make a meaningful impact on poverty reduction, rather than on the investors who stand to benefit from their work. Enterprises working in this space are in new territory – continually adapting their business models, earning low and slow returns and operating in markets that are subject to considerable exogenous shocks (e.g., economic instability, weak infrastructure, extreme weather events and poorly developed value chains). These firms will make decisions that can seem irrational if your focus is market return. They may seek out “at risk” populations, such as single moms balancing the demands of work and family, as employees. They may share ownership and decision-making with their workers. They may pay their suppliers not the price that is commonly expected in the market, but a higher price the firm sees as “fair.” The businesses themselves, and the funds that put their money into these firms, organize around the intention to generate a measurable, beneficial social or environmental impact alongside a financial return – and that prioritization is reflected in their structures, processes and activities.
However, to meet the return expectations that have been established by the sector’s push toward the larger mainstream market, we increasingly see conventional emerging markets investments being reclassified as “impact investing.” Arguably, it’s this trend that has transformed TPG’s investment in Apollo Tower, a cellphone tower company in Myanmar, from a standard emerging market foreign direct investment into an impact investment. The impact statement claimed by supporters is that cellphone access has “helped to increase transparency in a country known for tight control of its information, helping the nation take steps toward democracy.” Hmmm. Really? A cell phone company is actually a democracy and governance project in disguise? Seems a bit of a stretch.
As we write in our report, it should not be assumed that an investment in a cell tower, or a wind farm, or any other enterprise in the global south, is inherently socially positive. Rather, it should be incumbent upon the fund to demonstrate how these enterprises are intentionally structured to optimize impact and benefit poor and marginalized groups – rather than only providing implied, incidental or indirect benefits. They should be able to show what difference the fund’s provision of capital and support and engagement has made. Any self-identifying impact investor should be able to demonstrate a clear intentionality to achieve impact.
Furthermore, the research that has set the prevailing “have your cake and eat it too”-sized return expectations has its limitations. Take, for example, the very same GIIN/Cambridge associates “benchmark” report, which included no commentary on the associated impacts achieved and instead used a self-reported intention to generate social impact as the only impact-related criteria for inclusion in the benchmark. The data included a high proportion of funds focused on the theme of financial inclusion, an industry that has depended on decades of subsidies. Finally, the “benchmark” setting was drawn from a small pool of funds, all of which were targeting market rate returns.
Why does any of this matter anyway? Big tent, right? It matters because the rush to the mainstream can pull impact investing away from its original intent and undermine the meaningful role it can and should play in poverty reduction. It matters because high-profile investments such as Apollo Towers shift the goal posts for everyone. It makes philanthropists doing the critical work of providing smart subsidy to funds and enterprises operating in the toughest places ask, as they have of Root Capital, “Am I the dumbest money in the room?” – If everyone else is making tons of money, am I a sucker if I’m giving it away? And it can divert social entrepreneurs from their mission when they are challenged with the trade-off between purpose and profit. As one social entrepreneur told me recently, “Do we really need this money? Is it going to disorganize us from our original idea? The motivating factor will be to meet the profit targets, not looking at the social part. … Maybe the pressure we will feel from the investors will move us to abandon our women’s empowerment mission. We don’t want that to happen.”
We propose six recommendations that we think can provide a more balanced understanding of what is possible in impact investing, letting the sector begin to use money more creatively:
- We call for a shift of approach in the market; from one in which we tailor funds around the needs of investors to one focused on developing products that serve the needs of enterprises seeking to combat poverty. Specifically, we need wider adoption of alternative fund structures – such as permanent capital vehicles and evergreen funds – and new financial tools that reflect the predominantly “low and slow returns” of most enterprises prioritizing social impact.
- The sector needs greater transparency around reporting both the impact and financial returns(gross and net) achieved by impact investors.
- Donors and philanthropists need to deploy smart subsidy and patient capital (return of capital, rather than return on capital) to support enterprises capable of making a meaningful contribution to poverty reduction, and to support hybrid financing models alongside impact investors seeking a net return on capital. Grants, philanthropy and smart subsidy should be seen as part of the impact investing continuum, not its enemy.
- The industry needs more independent research to understand the enterprise-level experience, and to analyze which structures, approaches and incentives best help businesses to maintain an intentionality to optimize impact.
- We call on impact investors to agree to a voluntary code of practice that enshrines the intentionality to behave and take decisions in ways that have a primary focus on achieving impact.
- Impact investors should adopt incentives for optimizing, measuring and reporting impact as well as achieving financial return targets.
We have no problem with financial returns, but let’s not pretend that investors seeking a pure market return can tackle the most complex global challenges in high-risk markets. They cannot. Not in education. Not in health. Not in reducing child labor and forced marriage. Not in water and sanitation. Not even in banking for small enterprises, which continue to be significantly underserved today by markets everywhere, despite SMEs being the biggest generators of jobs and incomes globally. One just needs to look at the history of Silicon Valley or the microfinance industry – both completely commercial today – to justify smart subsidy and venture philanthropy. Our memories are simply too short. It’s not about distorting the market – often, there is not much there to distort – it is about catalyzing it.
Mara Bolis leads Oxfam’s work on shareholder advocacy, as well as influencing work on impact investing.
Photo by Hartwig HKD, via Flickr
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This post was originally published on NextBillion.net
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