“Impact investing,” as a term of art, was coined at Rockefeller Foundation retreats in northern Italy in 2007 and 2008. The attendees visiting the foundation's Bellagio Center near Lake Como—people working in organized philanthropy, asset management, social enterprise, and consulting—discussed how to describe the wide variety of their activities that had for decades engaged private
Next month will be the anniversary of the U.S. Business Roundtable’s 2019 call for a shift from “shareholder capitalism” toward “stakeholder capitalism.” Business leaders asked us to imagine a transformed world, but a bat virus in Wuhan had its own ambitious plans — and has, for the time being, transformed the world in quite another way. It
The Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) convened the new Response, Recovery, and Resilience Investment Coalition (R3) with the purpose of maximising global impact investing response efforts to the pandemic, by identifying high-impact investment opportunities and co-ordinating impact investors to fill financing gaps. “Impact investing is more important than ever. Impact investors have been at the
In rural areas all of over the world, two things can be really scarce: reliable electricity and adequate healthcare. To help solve this, solar companies in Nigeria are pitching in to provide electricity to the front-line healthcare facilities fighting COVID-19. Lumos Nigeria is one of four renewable energy companies that has been selected to receive a share
With the world now in the throes of a deep recession, one thing is clear: helping countries recover from COVID-19 will require billions of dollars to revive jobs and value chains, tackle systemic inequalities and promote a greener reconstruction. This will present significant opportunities for investors to innovate and finance projects that contribute to sustainable
The coronavirus pandemic is testing our global community in unprecedented ways. The unbearable human toll is already staggering. The toll on our healthcare system, our global economy, and our personal lives is still coming into focus. This pandemic is changing us. Among the most striking changes is our collective return to what is ‘essential.’ Governments
It is a common observation – supported by the likes of the World Bank and the United Nations – that incorporating resilience into communities after a natural disaster helps prepare them for future catastrophes. This is known in the jargon as ‘building back better’. Investors and asset managers serious about addressing the UN Sustainable Development
If you’re like me, it seems like the phrase “impact investing” is everywhere these days – outside of COVID-19, it has become this year’s must-have investment strategy. Unleashing the power of money for good has suddenly become the rage. New investment funds with an impact focus are launched weekly, not just in the US but
While the story of COVID-19’s aftermath on our financial markets has yet to be written, one lesson around which traditional finance is starting to coalesce is that COVID-19 has highlighted the need for greater investment in climate solutions right now. Like COVID-19, the costs of prevention are much cheaper than procrastination. What’s more, it’s quickly proving
If our objective is to stop the Covid-19 pandemic and restart the world’s economies, we urgently need entrepreneurial innovation to deliver vast quantities of effective tests as soon as humanly possible. Containment, which has helped our developed economies to slow the spread of the virus, is hugely costly and, in any case, will not be
When the lockdowns were initiated in response to the coronavirus crisis, I assumed that it meant I would get significant time back in my otherwise overscheduled travel and meeting diary. Like a lot of my peers, I thought that for a few weeks the break from the usual demands of our physical world would mean
Despite the hype behind sustainable investing, three out of four U.S. investors aren’t familiar with it, according to a recent Wells Fargo /Gallup Investor and Retirement Optimism Index survey. According to the survey, 37% of investors have heard nothing about sustainable investing, while 38% have heard only a little. Sustainable investing has made few inroads into retirement plans. Among
In theory, impact investments are investments made into organizations, companies, or funds to contribute to measurable positive social or environmental change while also yielding a return. Still, many impact-curious family office investors question whether achieving a measurable positive impact goes hand-in-hand with returns or if they'll have to sacrifice these earnings for the greater good. The answer
Both impact investingSocial Entrepreneurs and traditional philanthropy are on the rise after the decade-long economic boom following the Great Recession. But when does an impact investment make a bigger difference than a grant? The question is far more complicated than simply evaluating whether an impact investment can be profitable while doing good, suggests new research from
The Covid-19 pandemic presents unrivalled challenges. Healthcare systems urgently need to boost their capacity to treat patients, and societies need to strengthen efforts to safeguard the most vulnerable communities. Economic systems should find ways to protect workers, and avoid the collapse of financial markets. And almost overnight, huge swaths of the population have found themselves
Within the impact investing community, the value of gender diversity as an investment evaluation screen is rarely questioned because we know a secret that mainstream private equity and venture capital investors have failed to identify. What’s that? We’ve discovered that investing in women-led companies is not only exceptionally impactful, but it is also an excellent
There is an emerging consensus that relying on the invisible hand of markets to create societal value is not good enough. Evolving societal norms and regulatory pressures have rendered deliberate consideration of societal impact a necessity for business. Investors’ own genuine desire to not just do well but also do good is leading them to
For years, sustainable investing was viewed with suspicion. Could portfolios that avoided oil and gas companies, tobacco, and other profitable but controversial industries have high enough returns to satisfy investors? Would they survive during times of market upheaval? The COVID-19-fueled financial crisis is proving the naysayers wrong. Sustainable funds — dubbed Environmental, Social, and Governance
Bain & Company's 2020 private equity report showed the significant growth of impact investing with a 154% increase in assets acquired since 2015, as well as an increase in the size of funds raised. ESG investing is a real consideration and it is being embedded in companies' corporate strategies, as James Duncan explains. This represents a shift
References to concepts like ESG, impact investing, social responsibility, carbon footprint initiatives, sustainable investing, climate change, green or sustainable funds and other related concepts are at every turn now in the business media. Collectively, these can be referred to as “do good” precepts. This is not a new development. It’s been ongoing for the past
