Greetings, Agents of Impact!
Welcome to this week’s jam-packed ImpactAlpha LP/GP, where we take you inside the real business of impact investing and the dynamic relationships between owners, managers and intermediaries of impact capital.
In this week’s newsletter:
- Asian family offices are schooling their bankers in impact investing
- Mad Capital finances transitions to regenerative ag
- Chestnut Carbon’s big raise for nature-based carbon removal
- Why ESG is material to early-stage investing
Featured: LP = Leadership Potential
How family offices in Asia are educating their bankers about impact investing and climate capital. Typhoon Tapah put an exclamation point on the urgency of the climate crisis, bringing torrential rains and high winds to Hong Kong just as 1,500 gathered at last week’s AVPN conference. Hong Kong’s unusually high number of intense storms in the past month was the talk of many of the philanthropists, families and other investors at the conference, “Asian Leadership for an Inclusive World.” “The interest, awareness and acceptance of climate risk is there,” said Katy Yung of Sustainable Finance Initiative, a Hong Kong-based network for Asian family offices. “The next step that needs to happen is to unlock more action.” Asia’s wealth holders, who have long separated their business and philanthropic endeavors, are recognizing a market need to deploy more than grant dollars, AVPN’s Vikas Arora told ImpactAlpha. “The climate crisis is front and center in our part of the world.”
- Educational effort. “Our journey to impact was born from necessity, not ideology,” Kelvin Fu of Singapore-based Gunung Capital shares in a new report on eight Asian family offices that are shifting their businesses and their investment portfolios. “What began as a strategic response to save our family business became a catalyst for profound change within our family.” The report, from the Center for Sustainable Finance and Private Wealth, or CSP, and The ImPact, aims to help bankers and wealth advisors understand the role of values in families’ business and investment decision-making. “There has to be a mindset shift [among bankers] from focusing on the tools of how money is allocated to focusing on the person in front of them, and asking, ‘How can I help you achieve what you want?’” said CSP’s Ann Tan.
- Multicapital. The focus on financial capital can neglect wealthy families’ other valuable assets, including social, cultural and symbolic capital. Wealth holders are devising “multicapital” strategies to leverage all their resources, according to another new report from CSP. Karine Sarkissian of Tamar Capital family office leveraged her environmental design and urban planning background to create Le Studio, a venture studio offering portfolio companies free services in branding, storytelling, and impact measurement. When he signed the Giving Pledge, Urs Wietlisbach of Partners Group and Blue Earth Capital used his symbolic capital to signal that, “if you get rich through capitalism, you have a responsibility to give back.” “Noneconomic resources such as relationships, reputations, and knowledge are absolutely critical for driving impact,” writes CSP’s Kirsten Andersen in a guest post on ImpactAlpha. Read Andersen’s guest post.
- Wellbeing agenda. Tsao Pao Chee Group’s Chavalit Frederick Tsao is among the family’s fourth generation of business leaders; he’s on a mission to realign not just TPC but all business in Asia around impact (for background, see, “Tsao Family Office expands the LP pool for impact strategies in Africa.”) TPC Group is sponsoring this week’s convening of impact minds in Singapore to focus on “wellbeing” in business and finance in order to nurture creative, big-system thinking. A sample of the agenda: “Cultivating consciousness for systemic change”; “Healing the planet starts by healing ourselves”; and “Youth as co-stewards of a well-being future.” “It’s a serious business agenda,” Tsao told ImpactAlpha, “but with a different level of consciousness in how business models are developed.”
- Keep reading, “How family offices in Asia are educating their bankers about impact investing and climate capital,” by Jessica Pothering.
Dealflow: Food Systems
Exclusive: Mad Capital raises $78 million to help farmers and ranchers shift to regenerative agriculture. Mad Capital provides flexible financing to farmers in the US, helping them adopt organic and regenerative practices on thousands of acres of farmland. Without access to capital, small and mid-sized farmers struggle to make the transition, a shift that is critical to repairing degraded land and combating climate change. Institutional investors are being drawn to the sector for its impact and low-risk profile, said Mad Capital’s Brandon Welch. The firm’s second private credit fund, at $78 million, is nearly eight times the size of its predecessor. Among its more than 100 limited partners are the Schmidt, Rockefeller and McConnell foundations, Builders Vision, Social Finance, Bedari Collective and the New Mexico Finance Authority. The global market for regenerative agriculture is projected to reach over $57 billion by 2033, up from $13 billion last year, Welch noted. “It’s a massive market and it’s not like Mad Capital alone can satisfy the demand that these farmers and ranchers have.”
- Meat production. With the new private credit fund, Mad Capital is expanding its portfolio to include ranchers looking to transition to holistically-managed, grass-fed beef production. The new fund has already deployed over $25 million in loans to 17 farmers and ranchers in Texas, Montana, California, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Mad Capital’s financing is meant to help them navigate the “J-curve,” where investments may take time to pay off. Acknowledging the higher prices that consumers must pay for organic products, Welch said, “if we can help create more supply of those foods, we should see that differential in price decrease over time.”
- Fractal farmers. Separately, Cisco Foundation’s Regenerative Future Fund invested an undisclosed amount in the Fractal’s Farmer Agriculture Regenerative Management Fund, which provides equity capital to farmers transitioning to regenerative methods. Fractal also uses AI to analyze underlying land productivity, understand climate risks and underwrite deals.
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Chestnut Carbon raises $250 million for nature-based carbon removal. New York-based Chestnut Carbon topped up its Series B financing with $90 million from the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. Chestnut acquires marginal farmland and pastureland across the US – land that was once farmed or grazed and is now unused – and replants it with native trees to sequester carbon. The carbon credits generated are sold to corporations seeking verifiable offsets (see, “Corporate buyers nudge voluntary carbon markets toward higher-quality projects”). “Right now, what we know works are trees,” Chestnut’s Greg Adams told ImpactAlpha. “They’re the oldest carbon-capture machine ever created.” Given the possibility of wildfires or future harvesting, the duration of that storage is not as long as enhanced mineralization, biochar and other methods that can lock carbon away for centuries. Chestnut counts Microsoft, JPMorgan, Apollo Global Management and Sol Systems among its credit buyers; its pipeline now spans more than 65,000 acres across eight states and nearly 300 landowner partners. More.
WaterEquity backs SunCulture to launch private equity strategy. WaterEquity, the investment unit of Matt Damon’s nonprofit Water.org, inked the first deal from its Water and Climate Resilience Fund, committing $5 million in growth equity to Kenya-based SunCulture, which sells solar-powered water pumps to smallholder farmers to irrigate crops and access clean water. The Water and Climate Resilience Fund is WaterEquity’s first private equity and infrastructure vehicle. It makes debt and equity investments in higher-risk water technology and service companies, alongside infrastructure projects that generate more predictable cash flows. The fund brings together Microsoft, Starbucks, Xylem, Ecolab, Reckitt, Gap Inc. and others as limited partners. The big-name LPs send a market signal, said WaterEquity’s Aleem Remtula. “We’re demonstrating the concept – showing investors the pipeline of opportunities and helping them see that the perceived risk of water investments in emerging markets can often be much higher than the actual risk.” More.
New GP snapshots on ImpactAlpha. The Liist features impact fund managers and their market strategies. Among the new entries:
- Nordic Impact Funds: Financing climate resilience. Nordic Impact Funds is in the market with its second Nordic Impact Evergreen fund to scale agribusiness and fintech ventures in East Africa. The women-led firm has raised $7 million and made nine investments. More.
- MSquared: Investing in mixed-income housing. MSquared, a women-led real estate investment firm, backs mixed-income developments in cities across the country with its second Equitable Housing Solutions Fund. The fund pairs affordable and market-rate units to grow housing supply, keep neighborhoods diverse, and give investors stable returns. Go deeper.
Dealflow overflow. Investment news crossing our desks:
- Investment giant Brookfield is in talks to buy Yes! Communities, a large owner of manufactured home communities in the US, from Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC (see “Financing resident-owned mobile home communities to preserve affordability”). (Financial Times)
- T. Rowe Price and the International Finance Corp. raised $200 million for a new Emerging Markets Blue Economy Bond Strategy, a corporate bond fund focused on water security and marine conservation. Lukas Walton’s Builders Vision and water solutions company Xylem also backed the fund. (T. Rowe Price)
Impact Voices: Impact Management
LPs consider ESG to be material, so early-stage fund managers do, too. In boardrooms from Silicon Valley to Singapore, early-stage tech investors are wrestling with ESG frameworks designed for mature public companies, trying to force-fit them onto pre-revenue startups and growth-stage businesses. The result is often a mismatch between what gets measured and what actually drives value creation. Oliver Nixon and Johannes Lenhard of VentureESG have a simple prescription: focus on material issues, on the stuff that matters. Materiality isn’t monolithic, they write ahead of VentureESG’s Frame Conference kicking off in London on Thursday. In their work with more than 500 investment managers globally, the pair have identified three types of materiality that drive responsible investing and ESG integration in early-stage investing. “The result is ESG integration that actually works: driving value, enabling exits, and satisfying stakeholders without overwhelming early-stage companies with overly burdensome requirements.”
- Getting clear. The growing correlation between ESG and financial value is the most tangible example of materiality, particularly in B2B businesses, where corporations have strict procurement criteria on fair working conditions, diversity and sustainability. Another driver comes from would-be acquirers. “Strategic acquirers are conducting deeper ESG due diligence, not only to avoid reputational risks but to identify companies that align with their own sustainability commitments,” write Nixon and Lenhard. A third materiality push comes from large pension funds, universal owners and regulators. LP-driven materiality creates its own logic, note the authors. “Some ESG factors may be material for a GP to focus on partly (or purely) because an LP is interested or concerned about it.”
- Keep reading, “LPs consider ESG to be material, so early-stage fund managers do, too,” by Oliver Nixon and Johannes Lenhard of VentureESG.
Agents of Impact: Follow the Talent
The California Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank appoints Andy Nakahata as executive director and CEO. He replaces Scott Wu, who has led IBank since 2019… Congruent Ventures adds Divyansh Saksena, previously with Iconiq, as an analyst, and Kate Lee, previously with Galvanize Climate Solutions, as a platform associate… Energy Impact Partners welcomes Kaushal Makadia, previously with Liberty Mutual Insurance, as a portfolio analyst.
Blue Forest is looking for a data science manager… Concrete Transition Capital is hiring a head of capital formation and investor relations and a head of investments in San Francisco… The Community Office for Resource Efficiency has an opening for a director of climate action programs… B Capital seeks a part-time venture director and a capital formation manager… BFA Global is recruiting for a project manager in Nairobi… PRI is seeking a senior specialist of program management.
New York Climate week events: Impact Capital Managers will host, “The next chapter in climate investing,” Thursday, Sep. 25… Also that day, Brigit Helms of the Miller Center for Global Impact will join Halcyon’s Daniel Barker, IMPAQTO Capital’s Michelle Arevalo-Carpenter, and sustainability consultant Maha Khan for a conversation on the role of impact investing in advancing justice, equity and regeneration.
👉 View (or post) impact investing jobs on ImpactAlpha’s Career Hub.
Thank you for your impact!
– Sept. 16, 2025
