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Top Stories
Deal spotlight: Protecting individuals and businesses from data and identity theft
Dealflow | February 3, 2023
Four principles to help catalytic investors optimize allocations and scale impact
Catalytic Capital | February 2, 2023
Jonathan Rose Companies eyes $750 million for its sixth affordable housing fund
Community Finance | February 2, 2023
February 3, 2023
The Brief - Daily Insights into Impact Investing
The Week’s Impact Briefing
🎧 On this week’s podcast: ImpactAlpha’s David Bank joins host Monique Aiken to share takeaways from this week’s Agents of Impact Call on how investors are working to advance racial justice through the municipal bond market. Plus, the headlines.
The Week’s Call
Watch the video replay.
The Week’s Agent of Impact
Andrew Crosson, Invest Appalachia: Catalytic capital for community impact. Andrew Crosson was a decade deep community economic development work in central Appalachia when he got the call three years ago to lead Invest Appalachia, a nonprofit community impact fund, as founding CEO. He understood nonprofits and philanthropy and Appalachia’s challenges. “What I brought was a vision and an understanding of the ways this fund needed to function if it was going to benefit the region,” says Crosson. “I didn’t know a lot about finance.” Invest Appalachia is taking a catalytic and community-based approach to advance economic inclusion, health equity, climate resilience, and place-based impact in a region that has suffered decades of disinvestment and extraction. The fund closed $19 million of a targeted $40 million raise, and has built an additional $2.7 million catalytic capital pool for provide loan-guarantees, technical assistance and grants to crowd in investors.
The Week’s Dealflow
Deal spotlight: Protecting individuals and businesses from data and identity theft. Cell phones and digitization have helped billions of individuals, micro-entrepreneurs and small businesses improve their livelihoods. They’ve also introduced new risks, particularly around personal data and privacy. Omidyar Network’s India group this week backed PrivaSapien, a Bangalore-based maker of software that helps companies conduct privacy risk assessments, anonymize user data, flag concerns, and stay on top of regulatory requirements. “These solutions make it easier for organizations to adopt privacy-preserving techniques and eventually help the end-customer build greater trust in online data-sharing systems,” Omidyar Network India wrote in a post about the deal
The Week’s Talent
Noel Kinder, chief sustainability officer at Nike; Stacy Kauk, head of sustainability at Shopify; Emma Stewart, chief sustainability officer at Netflix; Vanessa Miler-Fels, vice president of climate at Schneider Electric; and Nate Gorence, chief of staff at Impossible Foods, will join Collaborative’s sustainability board.
The Week’s Jobs
New York and Washington
Recommendations for {{this.$store.state.user.first || 'you'}}
Podcasts | February 3, 2023
Finding the opportunities in (and the problems with) the municipal bond market
ImpactAlpha’s David Bank joins Host Monique Aiken to to share some takeaways from this week’s Agents of Impact Call on the steps that …
Muni Impact | January 31, 2023
Activest’s FIRE strategy seeks to bend the arc of municipal finance toward ‘fiscal justice’
ImpactAlpha, Jan. 31 – It’s distressingly easy to find places where city finances are distorted by systemic racism or outright bigotry. It’s harder …
Impact Voices | January 31, 2023
How Fair Food Network is reshaping investment norms to fight wealth inequity
Despite the good intentions and creative strategies of impact investors, extreme wealth inequity persists. The climate crisis will only deepen the divide, unless …
Editor's Picks
Podcasts | February 3, 2023
Finding the opportunities in (and the problems with) the municipal bond market
ImpactAlpha’s David Bank joins Host Monique Aiken to to share some takeaways from this week’s Agents of Impact Call on the steps that …
Muni Impact | January 31, 2023
Activest’s FIRE strategy seeks to bend the arc of municipal finance toward ‘fiscal justice’
ImpactAlpha, Jan. 31 – It’s distressingly easy to find places where city finances are distorted by systemic racism or outright bigotry. It’s harder …
Impact Voices | January 31, 2023
How Fair Food Network is reshaping investment norms to fight wealth inequity
Despite the good intentions and creative strategies of impact investors, extreme wealth inequity persists. The climate crisis will only deepen the divide, unless …
Top Stories
Deal spotlight: Protecting individuals and businesses from data and identity theft
Dealflow | February 3, 2023
Four principles to help catalytic investors optimize allocations and scale impact
Catalytic Capital | February 2, 2023
Jonathan Rose Companies eyes $750 million for its sixth affordable housing fund
Community Finance | February 2, 2023
How the Educational Resources Impact Fund is supporting quality instruction in schools
Sponsored | February 2, 2023
As India’s impact ventures grow, so does the need for growth-stage impact capital
India | February 2, 2023
Al Gore’s Just Climate makes first three climate tech investments
Climate and Clean Tech | February 1, 2023
How Europe is recalibrating tech, one ESG step at a time
ESG | February 1, 2023
S-curves and tipping points are accelerating the low-carbon future
Climate and Clean Tech | February 1, 2023
Startups raise green to reduce the carbon footprints of buildings
Dealflow | February 1, 2023
MNT-Halan raises $200 million to expand access to financial services in Egypt
Africa | February 1, 2023
Activest’s FIRE strategy seeks to bend the arc of municipal finance toward ‘fiscal justice’
Muni Impact | January 31, 2023
How Fair Food Network is reshaping investment norms to fight wealth inequity
Impact Investing | January 31, 2023
Looking Ahead to 2023
ESG | February 1, 2023
How Europe is recalibrating tech, one ESG step at a time
A crisis is usually followed by learning. If in 2022 tech private markets were defined by the crash of some of the highest-valued …
Looking Ahead to 2023 | January 3, 2023
Big ideas and predictions for ESG in 2023
ImpactAlpha, Jan. 3 – ESG – for enterprise operations and investment decision-making that account for environmental, social and governance considerations – took a beating …
Looking Ahead to 2023 | December 30, 2022
Holiday List No. 3: Seven dealflow trends to keep an eye (or two) out for in 2023
ImpactAlpha, Dec 30 — Impact fund managers showed surprising resilience in a tough year for fundraising. That gives them dry powder to deploy …
Looking Ahead to 2023 | December 28, 2022
Holiday List: No. 2: Ten ImpactAlpha podcasts worth another listen in 2023
ImpactAlpha, Dec. 28 – ImpactAlpha produced nearly 50 weekly podcasts and more than a dozen longer-form interviews with Agents of Impact. VC Includes Bahiyah …
Looking Ahead to 2023 | December 26, 2022
Holiday Lists No. 1: A dozen Agents of Impact who broke through in 2022
ImpactAlpha, Dec. 26 – Let’s give all of you Agents of Impact a round of applause. In dozens of profiles this year, we …
Looking Ahead to 2023 | December 23, 2022
Next Year in Impact Investing: Abundance
ImpactAlpha, Dec. 23 – “Americans will always do the right thing, after they have tried everything else,” as Winston Churchill (may have) once said. …
Looking Ahead to 2023 | December 22, 2022
Using ESG and impact to sort leaders from laggards in 2023
ImpactAlpha, Dec. 22 – It’s not about the scores. It’s about the solutions. ESG – shorthand for the consideration of environmental, social and governance considerations …
Looking Ahead to 2023 | December 21, 2022
Abundance, ownership and inclusion hold keys to shared prosperity in 2023
ImpactAlpha, Dec. 21 – Real solutions. Real revenues. Real places. While other investors chased crypto and other tech fads, inclusive investors were finding …
Frontier and Growth Markets | December 20, 2022
2023 emerging market opportunities are locally-rooted, gender-smart and climate-friendly
ImpactAlpha, December 20 – Impact investing’s early advocates imagined a trillion-dollar industry. This year, by one estimate, the industry surpassed that target. Big …
Climate Finance | December 19, 2022
Deadline 2030: Midway to climate marker, time to take deployment exponential
ImpactAlpha, Dec. 19 – Halfway there. When the ball drops in Times Square this year, it will ring in the critical midpoint in the …
Climate Finance
Signals | February 1, 2023
S-curves and tipping points are accelerating the low-carbon future
ImpactAlpha, Feb. 1 – The future of energy is S-shaped. Adoption of technological innovations is typically slow until they hit a tipping point, …
Green Infrastructure | February 1, 2023
Startups raise green to reduce the carbon footprints of buildings
ImpactAlpha, February 1 – Buildings account for 40% of total global carbon emissions, because of how building materials are produced, what materials are …
Climate Finance | January 31, 2023
Obvious Ventures backs Senken to finance reforestation through ‘carbon forwards’
ImpactAlpha, January 31 – Berlin and Cape Town-based Senken is a blockchain-based carbon credit trading platform. Its next offering is a form of …
Climate Finance | January 26, 2023
Voluntary carbon markets face a reckoning over credit quality and environmental impact
ImpactAlpha, Jan. 25 – Are carbon markets a key pillar of climate finance, or an empty exercise in double-counting and greenwashing? After soaring …
Frontier and Growth Markets | January 26, 2023
Climate tech venture Ecozen raises $25 million, giving early investors a partial exit
ImpactAlpha, January 26 – Ecozen, in Pune, India, launched a decade ago to provide affordable, clean energy-fueled products for India’s smallholder farmers. The …
Impact Management | January 25, 2023
To catalyze climate capital, development finance institutions are pressed to ‘publish what you fund’
ImpactAlpha, January 25 – Six trillion dollars. That’s roughly how much is needed annually to fight climate change and meet the U.N.’s Sustainable …
Climate and Clean Tech | January 25, 2023
Scythe Robotics raises $42 million for ‘pay-as-you-mow’ landscaping equipment
ImpactAlpha, January 25 — Gas-powered equipment like lawn mowers and leaf blowers emit more than 240 million tons of pollutants each year, according …
Dealflow | January 25, 2023
Generate Capital raises $880 million to capitalize green infrastructure boom
ImpactAlpha, Jan. 25 – Generate is an investor, owner and operator of green infrastructure, from community solar systems and municipal wastewater treatment to …
Smallholder Agriculture | January 23, 2023
BlueOrchard invests $5.29 million in Brazilian insurer Newe for climate resilience
ImpactAlpha. Jan. 23 – Climate-driven floods, droughts and extreme weather around the world caused more than $268 billion in costs last year. Most …
Dealflow | January 23, 2023
Bamboo Capital’s Build Fund backs Green Mountain Arabica Coffee in Rwanda
ImpactAlpha, January 23 — In Rwanda’s Karenge region, women-owned Green Mountain Arabica Coffee exports green unroasted coffee beans that it sources from 1,200 …
Climate Finance | January 23, 2023
Variations on a theme: Securitizing fees and taxes to finance climate adaptation
Ghana securitized an education tax to improve access to education and a petrol tax to pay off legacy debts in the banking sector. …
Low-carbon transition | January 20, 2023
ImpactAlpha Deal Spotlight: Nature-based biotech
ImpactAlpha, January 20 — Forests, oceans and soils play a crucial role in absorbing greenhouse gas emissions – and they could use some …
Muni Impact
Podcasts | February 3, 2023
Finding the opportunities in (and the problems with) the municipal bond market
ImpactAlpha’s David Bank joins Host Monique Aiken to to share some takeaways from this week’s Agents of Impact Call on the steps that …
Muni Impact | January 31, 2023
Activest’s FIRE strategy seeks to bend the arc of municipal finance toward ‘fiscal justice’
ImpactAlpha, Jan. 31 – It’s distressingly easy to find places where city finances are distorted by systemic racism or outright bigotry. It’s harder …
Muni Impact | January 24, 2023
‘You can’t do impact on a passive basis’: Q&A with activist muni-investor Eric Glass
ImpactAlpha, Jan. 24 – After 15 years as an analyst, trader, and portfolio manager at AllianceBernstein, Eric Glass was asked in 2015 to develop …
Muni Impact | January 24, 2023
Market hypocrisy, political opportunism, and the common good
The attorney general of Texas earlier this month accused Citigroup of running afoul of a state law that “bars most government contracts with …
Muni Impact | January 17, 2023
Overheard at the Public Finance Conference: Investment opportunities in Emerging Market America
ImpactAlpha, Jan. 17 – A computer glitch that snarled air traffic last week presented a fitting backdrop as government and finance leaders gathered …
Muni Impact | January 12, 2023
The billion-dollar cost to the ESG culture wars
ImpactAlpha, Jan. 12 – Banks that use environmental, social, or governance, or ESG frameworks in their investing practice are being targeted by state legislators …
Climate Finance | January 10, 2023
Matching local projects with climate capital to deploy community infrastructure
ImpactAlpha, Jan. 10 – The Great Deployment is on. The capital is teed up. The technology is ready. The Inflation Reduction Act and …
Looking Ahead to 2023 | December 21, 2022
Abundance, ownership and inclusion hold keys to shared prosperity in 2023
ImpactAlpha, Dec. 21 – Real solutions. Real revenues. Real places. While other investors chased crypto and other tech fads, inclusive investors were finding …
Agents of Impact | December 16, 2022
Napoleon Wallace, Southern Reconstruction Fund: Restorative capital for Black wealth
ImpactAlpha, Dec. 16 – Napoleon Wallace’s presence was all over the recent Mission Investors Exchange conference in Baltimore. …As the co-founder of Activest, which …
Sponsored | December 15, 2022
How impact investments are helping build healthy communities
Our zip codes play a big part in how long and well we live. It’s easier to lead a healthy life when you …
Muni Impact | December 12, 2022
What Adasina learned about advancing ‘fiscal justice’ by investing $60 million in muni bonds
ImpactAlpha, Dec. 12 – San Francisco-based Adasina Social Capital calls itself a “bridge between financial markets and social justice.” But even an organization accustomed …
Muni Impact | December 12, 2022
Cities embrace ESG in muni bonds even as overall market dips
ImpactAlpha, Dec. 12 – Municipal bond issues are down 17% this year compared to 2021 as interest rates have spiked, according to SIFMA. But …
Agents of Impact
Bold leaders. Taking action. Driving impact.
December 2, 2022
Seth Bannon, Fifty Years: Big swings at big challenges (podcast)
November 4, 2022
Mia Mottley, Barbados: Shaping the global finance agenda.
October 7, 2022
Regina Kline, Enable Ventures: Closing the disability gap
September 23, 2022
Suzanne Biegel, GenderSmart: Making markets work for women and the world
July 8, 2022
Amy Bell, The Cook’s Nook: Planting seeds for impact
June 25, 2022
New Climate Leaders: Winning with a green agenda
February 18, 2022
Ambar Amleh, Ibtikar Fund: Putting Palestinian entrepreneurs on the map
Explore ImpactAlpha
February 3, 2023
The Week in Impact Investing: Dilemmas
February 1, 2023
Al Gore’s Just Climate makes first three climate tech investments
February 1, 2023
How Europe is recalibrating tech, one ESG step at a time
February 1, 2023
S-curves and tipping points are accelerating the low-carbon future
February 1, 2023
Startups raise green to reduce the carbon footprints of buildings
January 31, 2023
ImpactAlpha Open: Quality carbon credits + Black-worker ownership
January 30, 2023
Trust, not technology, bonds patients and providers
January 27, 2023
The Week in Impact Investing: Integrity
January 27, 2023
ImpactAlpha Deal Spotlight: Black-worker ownership
January 26, 2023
Tado raises €43 million for energy-efficient thermostats
January 24, 2023
Market hypocrisy, political opportunism, and the common good
January 24, 2023
BioElements secures $30 million for bioplastics in Latin America
January 23, 2023
How to get more international money flowing in local currency
January 20, 2023
The Week in Impact Investing: Cred
January 20, 2023
ImpactAlpha Deal Spotlight: Nature-based biotech
January 18, 2023
Electrifying heavy-duty drayage trucks at California’s ports
January 17, 2023
ImpactAlpha Open: Structuring finance for impact + climate SPACs
January 13, 2023
The Week in Impact Investing: Catalytic
January 13, 2023
Deal spotlight: Climate SPAC déjà vu
January 12, 2023
Goldman Sachs climate fund hits $1.6 billion
January 12, 2023
The billion-dollar cost to the ESG culture wars
January 11, 2023
Pakam raises pre-seed funding to improve waste recycling in Nigeria
January 11, 2023
Generate bets on Sedron Technologies’ municipal wastewater treatment
January 11, 2023
A human rights approach in impact investing
January 10, 2023
VilCart raises $13 million to digitalize India’s mom and pop shops
January 10, 2023
ImpactAlpha Open: Inside impact reports + restorative capital
January 9, 2023
A passel of clean energy deals to kick off the new year
January 6, 2023
The Week in impact investing: Deploy
January 6, 2023
Dealflow spotlight: Following the money in 2023
January 5, 2023
Three ways product resale is making the circular economy sexy
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