ImpactAlpha Open | December 3, 2024

ImpactAlpha Open: Impact investing in Chile  + LeapFrog Investments’ fourth fund

Dennis Price
ImpactAlpha Editor

Dennis Price

Hi there, Agent of Impact! Welcome to the first ImpactAlpha Open of December.

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In this week’s Open:

  • Impact investing in Chile
  • The climate cost of Thanksgiving dinner
  • The Market Makers: Rickke Mananzala of New York Foundation
  • LeapFrog Investments’ fourth fund

Let’s get to it. – Dennis Price

Must-reads on ImpactAlpha

  • In Chile, impact investments are hiding in plain sight. The term “impact” doesn’t yet have wide recognition in Chile, but as startup culture takes hold, investors are seeing many of the new investment opportunities through an impact lens, reports ImpactAlpha contributor Shefali Anand in the feature for November’s ImpactAlpha Latin America newsletter. Dig in.
  • The growing cost of Thanksgiving’s dinner. Prices for Thanksgiving mainstays have come down from recent inflation-driven peaks. But the cost of a holiday dinner is still 19% higher than in 2019. One growing cause of food inflation is perhaps the most fixable and least talked about: the climate, writes As You Sow’s Andrew Behar in his latest Fiduciary Future column. Take a spin.
  • CDFIs seek bipartisan support. Can their track record of success help community development finance institutions navigate choppy waters ahead? Last week’s celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Treasury Department’s CDFI Fund was muted by a looming concern: President-elect Donald Trump and his allies have vowed to take a buzz saw to federal agencies and spending. CDFIs “bring together public, private, philanthropic and community actors for the purpose of investing in economic mobility and, more broadly, shared prosperity,” write Annie Donovan of Raza Development Fund and Donna Gambrell of Appalachian Community Capital. Go deeper.
  • Toolkit for financing social determinants of health. It took more than 40 years for Capital Impact Partners to lend its first $3 billion in support of equitable health and wealth-building in overlooked US communities. Now, as the anchor of Momentus Capital, the Arlington, Va.-based community lender is aiming to originate $1 billion in loans annually to expand equitable capital access for “social determinants of health,” including affordable housing, healthy food and healthcare. ImpactAlpha’s Roody Senatus caught up with Momentus’ Ellis Carr. Catch up quickly.
  • Adaptation and resilience bonds come to the fore. The election of Donald Trump in the US, along with the too-modest ambitions of global climate negotiators at last month’s COP29 summit in Azerbaijan, have dimmed prospects for concerted action to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above historical levels. That makes adaptation to the accelerating climate shocks even more urgent – and potentially more bankable, reports Louie Woodall for ImpactAlpha. Read on.

Agents of Impact

🏃🏽‍♀️ On the move

  • Perry Clarkson, who joined SJF Ventures as a healthcare-focused senior associate in 2019, is the firm’s newest partner.
  • Edouard Felenbok, previously with Bain & Company, joins Ownership Works as client advisory services director.
  • Tiffany Durr, who has held the role of president of LISC Fund Management since the departure of George Ashton in May, fully steps into the role.

The Week’s Podcasts

🎧 The Market Makers: Driving bottom-up change in New York with impact investments and grants (video podcast)

In the early 2000s, Rickke Mananzala was a young community organizer working on racial, economic and gender justice and LGBTQ issues in New York City. He didn’t know much about philanthropy but was struck by a positive meeting with a grantmaker from the New York Foundation. “I felt like they really believed in us, really trusted us as young people of color, that they trusted our vision for change,” he recounts on the Market Makers, part of the ImpactAlpha Podcast Network. Twenty years later, Mananzala is president of the New York Foundation and is working to shift the 125-year old institution’s $100 million endowment toward impact investing, he tells podcast hosts Lenore Champagne Beirne of Bright Ventures and Troy Duffie of the Milken Institute. “I want to make our investments feel like our grant making.”

  • Listen to, or watch, this episode of The Market Makers on ImpactAlpha. The Market Makers is part of the ImpactAlpha Podcast Network, smart conversations by and for impact investing professionals.

The Week’s Deal Spotlight

💰 LeapFrog Investments closes fourth fund at $808 million

LeapFrog has been in the market since 2022 with its fourth fund, targeting a cool $1 billion. It closed the fund about $200 million shy, a reflection of what LeapFrog CEO Andy Kuper called “one of the most challenging fundraising cycles for private equity this century.” That’s saying something: LeapFrog launched and raised its first fund at the height of the financial crisis. The fourth fund is LeapFrog’s largest, with more than half of the capital mobilized from investors in Asia, a key investment region. First-time investors came from Japan, Singapore and China, as well as Austria, Norway, Oman and Turkiye. LeapFrog has also secured $210 million in pre-allocated co-investment capital from International Finance Corp. and others. It is also teaming up with Prudential Financial on an investment in South African insurance and pension provider Alexander Forbes, bringing Fund IV’s total of committed and mobilized capital to just under $1.2 billion.

Get in the Game

💼 Step up

  • Nia Impact Capital seeks a managing director in Oakland.
  • Jordan Park is hiring a senior impact analyst in San Francisco or New York.
  • Impact Capital Managers is recruiting a communications and policy analyst in Washington DC.

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