Agents of Impact | May 7, 2020

10x Challenge: ImpactAlpha opens channels for collaboration and content

David Bank
ImpactAlpha Editor

David Bank

ImpactAlpha, May 7The growing community of Agents of Impact has been ImpactAlpha’s beat as well as our audience. You are our collaborators and contributors as well.

Since the coronavirus crisis upended everything, we’ve been working harder than ever to channel your investments, your initiatives and your insights. We have added a weekly podcast, doubled our guest posts and bolstered our partnerships across the impact landscape. We provided The Brief free to all registered users, upgraded our enterprise subscribers with “all-in” site licenses and increased the free stories available on ImpactAlpha.com. Our scholarship fund is helping subscribers stay connected in difficult times.

The 10x challenge: Pandemic is a chance for impact investors to step up by an order of magnitude – or more  

To be honest, we have struggled to keep up with demand, and with the scope of the unfolding story. Participation has soared in our Agents of Impact conference calls, most notably last week in response to our “10x challenge” to ramp up impact investing in the face of COVID-19.

To help you stay connected, and to help us keep track, we are turning our editorial Slack channels inside-out – and opening them to all Agents of Impact. Our aim is to help you connect with each other on the challenges you are working on – and to enlist you to help us cover our expanding beats.

In the spirit of 10x, we are seeding 10 conversations; we will add (and cull) topics per your interests:

#Agents-of-Impact. Check-In and introduce yourself. Update your mood. Offer your services and ask for help.

#Frontier-Finance. Share solutions for capital providers and impact enterprises in emerging markets, with a specific design focus around a stabilization and liquidity fund for small and growing businesses.

#Community-Capital. Expand the channels and flow of capital for local and place-based investing and entrepreneurial ecosystems, with special focus on CDFIs and local loan funds, Opportunity Zones, alt-ownership models and models for individual relief.

#Impact-Tech. Identify opportunities and insights in healthtech, fintech, edtech, alt-protein and more. 

#Inclusive-Capital. Share strategies and opportunities that are gender smart, have a racial equity lens, drive diversity and overcome implicit bias.

#Climate-Regeneration. Accelerate renewables financing, agriculture and food, water and soil, conservation and landscapes in the race to net-zero.

#System-Change. Repricing risk, reforming markets, incentivizing impact and reforming indexes and benchmarks. 

#Management-Measurement. Call out impact-washing while you geek out on impact management, data and disclosure.

#Catalytic-Capital. Pull the levers of risk and return with flexible terms, patient capital, credit enhancement and blended finance.

#Social-Mobilization. Tune us in to civic engagement, public policy, new forms of organizing and the growing youth mobilization.

Here’s how to participate, in five easy steps: 

  1. Go to ImpactAlpha’s Slack channel.
  2. Click on “Channel browser” in the left column.
  3. Add yourself to any of the discussions channels above (or join a channel directly by clicking on the links above).
  4. Join the conversation with a note or a link. 
  5. Not yet on Slack? Sign up here and you’ll be added to the new channels.