ImpactAlpha Open

Bridging gaps in community green lending + exiting to employees

Dennis Price · April 14, 2026

Greetings Agents of Impact! Welcome to ImpactAlpha Open, a free weekly sampling of the top news and views from ImpactAlpha.

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☎️ Tomorrow’s Call: How emerging impact managers turn community capital into functioning funds. You’ve got an investment thesis, a deal pipeline and some aligned investors. How do you get an impact fund off the ground? Join fund managers and operating partners who have successfully bridged that gap to discuss what it takes to move from an investment thesis to a fully functioning fund. Hear from Broadstreet’s Mariel Kennedy and Steve Petsos, along with Groundbreak Coalition’s Eric White and Fibers Fund’s Sarah Kelley, on the next Agents of Impact Call, tomorrow, Wednesday, April 15, at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm London. RSVP today.

In this week’s Open:

  • Bridging the gaps in community green lending
  • Retiring business owners exiting to their employees
  • Podcasts: Russell Sprole, Angela Achitei and Mara Bolis
  • Spotlight: Real-time Earth monitoring via satellites

Let’s dig in. – Dennis Price

Must-Reads on ImpactAlpha

  • With small steps and grand plans, community lenders expand access to financing for green infrastructure. It’s a far cry from the $20 billion that green lenders expected to be deploying by now. But a smattering of small investments and grants for green energy retrofits, EV charging and community solar projects are demonstrating that such lending makes economic sense even in the face of a hostile US administration. “We still believe fundamentally that the network of community lenders is the best approach to scaling energy lending at a local level,” Amir Kirkwood of the Justice Climate Fund tells Amy Cortese. Keep reading.
  • For retiring business owners, employee buyout options can go head-to-head with private equity. Retiring business owners that sell to their employees can have their cake and eat it too, reports Roodgally Senatus. “Provided the seller’s business meets certain criteria, employee ownership will win on its own merits because of all the benefits it can offer to that selling owner,” says Ashish Agrawal of Zolidar, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup with an exit-planning tool to let small business owners make just such a comparison. Check it out.
  • Program-related investments don’t have to be so hard, or so rare. Some philanthropies are investing, rather than grant-making, to advance their impact goals. The vehicle, reports Jessica Pothering, is program-related investments, or PRIs, an underutilized tool that allows private foundations to earn a return through debt, equity and other investments made from their program budgets. In a new report, Maoz “Michael” Brown shares examples from seasoned users and lessons from new adopters to encourage broader use of the philanthropic tool. Learn more.

Agents of Impact

  • Ravi Bhatt was promoted to managing director and head of responsible investment at Apis Partners.
  • Greysteel brought on Drew McWilliams, previously with Ariel Property Advisors, as director of national affordable housing. 
  • NESsT promoted Mariana Paulino Lima to associate director of the Lirio Fund Brazil.

The Week’s Podcasts

🎧 This Week in Impact

Host Brian Walsh takes up ImpactAlpha’s top stories with editor David Bank. Up this week: Could the Iran war spur the growth of local, sustainable alternatives in energy, fertilizer and cookstoves? Plus, introducing ImpactAlpha Edge, and a public reckoning with an aquaculture investment gone bad.

🦸 Agents of Impact: Virta Ventures adapts its asset-light thesis for AI and climate policy challenges

The next generation of climate tech startups won’t look like the “asset-light” software startups that held favor until recently. And they will not be financed like them either, explains Virta Ventures‘ Russell Sprole on the latest Agents of Impact Podcast. The San Francisco-based manager is targeting climate solutions with both digital and physical components.

👩‍🏫 Women Changing Finance: Building social enterprises in eastern Europe

ADV Romania Group’s Angela Achitei joins host Krisztina Tora to share her stories of building social enterprises in Romania and throughout Eastern Europe. Over the past 15 years, Achitei has founded businesses designed to create opportunities for people from vulnerable backgrounds. Difficulty accessing capital spurred her to co-create a community-owned financial institution to fund what traditional lenders wouldn’t.

📯 Criterion Institute Podcast: The intersection of gender lens investing and AI 

Harvard’s Mara Bolis joins host Joy Anderson to discuss her work at the Kennedy School, and her reflections on addressing gender inequality in emerging technologies. Bolis argues for an interdisciplinary approach to conversations around new technologies that empower underrepresented voices.

The Week’s Spotlight

🛰️ AI squeezes more value out of real-time earth monitoring via satellites

More than a thousand observation satellites are circling the planet. Combined with AI, which can process their imagery in minutes, they make up a real-time monitoring layer for Earth systems that can track extreme weather and other phenomena at unprecedented scale and speed. As asset managers, insurers and carbon markets integrate satellite data, impact investors are taking notice. 

Get in the Game

💼 Step up

  • Energy Impact Partners is hiring a growth and private equity associate in New York.
  • Ontario Teacher’s Pension Plan seeks an investment analyst in San Francisco.
  • Perkins Eastman is looking for a sustainability specialist in Washington, DC.

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