The brilliant case for impact investing in America’s HBCUs. Four years into a social justice movement in which private and public funders vowed to prioritize communities of color, America’s 107 historically Black colleges and universities continue to lack reliable and affordable access to capital. The end of affirmative action in higher education admissions only increases the imperative to close the funding gap for HBCUs, argues Kresge Foundation's Erika Brice in a guest post. “It’s a moment that calls for a response,” says Brice, an alum of Howard University in Washington, DC (for background, see “Social returns on investments in HBCUs rise as affirmative action recedes”). Kresge invested $3.5 million in Reinvestment Fund’s $25 million HBCU Brilliance Fund to help HBCUs restructure their balance sheets, diversify their revenues, upgrade infrastructure and enhance student services. The flexible, mission-driven debt capital represents an underwriting approach that Reinvestment Fund, a community development financial institution, says “better reflects the financial realities of the schools.” The Brilliance Fund will back real estate projects both on and off campus. “Our long term goal is to have HBCUs serve as community anchors,” says Reinvestment Fund’s Damien Wilson. HBCUs generate an estimated $14.8 billion in annual economic impact.
Building equitable food systems with community and reparative capital. On this week’s Agents of Impact Podcast, co-host Sherrell Dorsey chats with Olivia Watkins of Black Farmer Fund. The fund aims to meet the modern needs of Black farmers and food entrepreneurs with affordable capital and technical assistance (for background see, “Black Farmer Fund is reimagining U.S. agricultural finance, on farmers’ terms”).
Pula lands $20 million to offer livestock insurance to smallholder farmers. Insurance tech startup Pula launched in 2015 to provide crop insurance to small scale farmers, 80% of whom lack access to products that protect their incomes from extreme weather events, like drought. The Kenyan company partners with insurers to embed their policies into the costs of the farm inputs farmers buy – when a farmer buys seeds, for example, those seeds come with an insurance policy. Its Series B equity round will support its expansion into livestock insurance. Swiss impact investor BlueOrchard led the round. Along with existing investors, Gates Foundation, Kenyan venture capital firm Hesabu Capital and the IFC also participated (see, "The next big thing is climate adaptation for smallholder farmers").
How innovative financing structures can help close California’s housing gap. The way housing is financed and constructed in the United States has changed little in decades. The result: skyrocketing costs and a nationwide housing shortage. California alone needs an estimated 2.5 million new homes by 2030, with 40% of those units for lower-income households. More than 100 policies adopted by the state in recent years to unwind exclusionary land use practices and increase housing production are unlocking development potential. Private investors and philanthropists have a big role to play in “catalyzing innovative approaches to financing housing to increase the pace of development, including increasing access to capital, reducing financing costs, and seeding novel approaches,” writes Kevin Schuster of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in a guest post on ImpactAlpha.
Alison Lingane, who co-founded Project Equity with Hilary Abell in 2014, is transitioning from her role as chief innovation and investment officer to senior advisor to Project Equity’s Employee Ownership Catalyst Fund… Connectivity Capital is hiring a project manager in Washington, DC… MacArthur Foundation is looking for an awards manager in Chicago… Also in Chicago, Builders Vision is recruiting a vice president for impact measurement and management… Chicago TREND is hiring a senior property manager.
In New Orleans, the city’s housing finance agency has become a “green bank” to underwrite community solar, water treatment projects, and resilience hubs. …
Private equity fund managers looking for value-creation opportunities are increasingly finding their way to impact themes like climate-resilient and sustainable agriculture, employee engagement …
ImpactAlpha, January 19 – Impact investors have for years debated the need for embedded structures to incentivize impact outcomes for impact fund managers. …
ImpactAlpha, Dec. 15 – The $4 trillion muni market is so big that small movements in the pricing of bonds can mean shifts of …
ImpactAlpha, November 17 – That women are more adversely affected by climate change is well established (in impact and development circles at any …
This week’s Agents of Impact Call continued a tradition started nearly a decade ago by Fran Seegull of the US Impact Investing Alliance …
ImpactAlpha, Sept. 29 – It’s the age-old struggle: labor vs capital, workers vs. owners. But what happens when employees get a stake in the …
ImpactAlpha, August 25 – A growing ecosystem of Native-led entrepreneurs, lenders, financial intermediaries and nonprofits are driving Indian Country’s emerging economy. “It’s kind …
ImpactAlpha, July 28 – Most historically Black colleges and universities were formed during the Reconstruction era. In the more than a century since, Spelman, …
ImpactAlpha, Jun. 22 – Even as some politicians ramp up anti-ESG rhetoric, asset owners and allocators are signaling an appetite for investment strategies …
ImpactAlpha, Mar. 31 – The search for a universal metric to guide investments in racial justice and equitable wealth-building was…aspirational. “We are still a …
ImpactAlpha. Feb. 24 – “A labor market where workers have more opportunities and have more power and have more leverage is a good …
🎧 This Week in Impact. Host Brian Walsh takes up ImpactAlpha’s top stories with editor David Bank. Up this week: federal funds to …
The era of cake-ism (as in having it and eating it, too) has come to an inglorious end. “I think we’re in an …
Host Brian Walsh dives into ImpactAlpha’s top stories, with commentary from editor David Bank. Up this week: Tracking the players building the US’s …
ImpactAlpha podcasts are back! We’re pleased to share our revamped interview show, Agents of Impact, hosted by David Bank and Sherrell Dorsey, founder …
Impact(ed) is part of the ImpactAlpha Podcast Network, a set of shows hosted and produced by leading voices in impact and sustainable investing, …
On This Week in Impact, Brian Walsh dives into some of ImpactAlpha’s top stories, with commentary from editor David Bank. This week: the …
Venture capital invested nearly $500 billion in 2022. By investing into startups seeking transformational scale, successful venture-backed companies have the potential to change …
ImpactAlpha, Dec. 29 – “Net zero is not going to get us anywhere,” Ariane Mahler of Veridien Global Investors told David Bank of ImpactAlpha …
ImpactAlpha, Dec. 22 – Diverse innovators building for all customers in large industries like digital health, fintech and the future of work have been …
The numbers tell the story: overall attendance at COP28 is up threefold from last year – and the number of fossil fuel lobbyists …
Private foundations collectively control more than a trillion dollars of capital invested across a variety of traditional asset classes. A small portion of …
ImpactAlpha’s Amy Cortese speaks with Full Cycle’s Stephan Nicoleau at the start of COP 28 to hear what he’s expecting – and hoping …
Editor’s Note: This article is part of a partnership between ImpactAlpha and Mission Investors Exchange (MIE) to present new ideas and perspectives in …
The way housing is financed and constructed in the United States has experienced little change in decades, leading to skyrocketing costs, barriers to …
“One million lives touched.” “800 jobs created.” “50,000 acres of land restored.” Capital allocators often see these types of punchy headlines in the …
Impact Frontier’s Impact Reporting Norms target a leverage point in the impact investing system: impact reporting. They promise to provide greater clarity and …
Ashish Kumar is a long-time climate investor and a market / ecosystem builder. He is a strategic advisor to Mati Carbon. This month, …
In one of Puerto Rico’s poorest neighborhoods, you can find what economists might call a “green shoot.” The plan for Oasis, a six-acre, …
Development finance institutions like to style themselves as the original impact investors. It was Lord Reith, the first chairman of the UK’s development …
To achieve stated climate goals, the U.S. government is embarking on what should be the largest coordination of private and public capital aimed …
In a world in which the UN SDG financing gap continues to grow, we face a double hurdle: blended finance is still struggling …
As more investment firms launch impact funds, it has become increasingly difficult for institutional allocators to identify the most qualified fund managers to …
Measure what matters. Disclosures are key. Transparency leads to accountability. Which investor, and in fact regulator, wouldn’t agree with these common-sense business mantras …
“We need to invest in life, rather than expensive infrastructure investments,” Anne van Leeuwen, a founding farmer from the European Alliance for Regenerative Agriculture, pleaded …
The winner of a contest to sharpen the impact lens of students through deal sourcing and diligence was a team from London Business …
ImpactAlpha, January 26 – Ines Schiller got the idea for seaweed tampons while training in South Africa to be a marine environment guide. …
ImpactAlpha, Dec. 23 – Bold leaders. Taking action. Driving impact. That’s the tagline we’ve used for the dozens of Agents of Impact we profiled …
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. It is republished …
Sustainable development? “More of the same.” Forest carbon credits? “Outside-imposed extraction.” Impact investing? “Are we really going far enough? Or are we just …
ImpactAlpha, September 8 — In 15 years in impact investing, Christopher Bentley noticed “a lot of for-profit companies focused on the criminal justice …
ImpactAlpha, August 18 – Monica Brand Engel’s advice to impact investors is this: Imperfect execution is ok. “Authentic impact is about accepting imperfection …
ImpactAlpha, Aug. 11 – Samuel Yeboah isn’t discouraged by the economic storm battering his home country of Ghana and many other emerging economies. “As …
Many investors look at promising new climate solutions and say, ‘Great, come back to me when you have traction.’ Azolla Ventures is more …
ImpactAlpha, June 30 – The first thing that Katherine Stodulka does when you meet her is suggest you meet someone else. Then she’ll …
ImpactAlpha, May 26 – A decade ago, investors pushed back against the loan products Jessica Espinoza was designing for female business owners as …
ImpactAlpha, May 12 – Nigeria-born climate entrepreneur and “professional nomad” Aina Abiodun is bullish on place-based climate innovation. “There is nothing more urgent than …
The brilliant case for impact investing in America’s HBCUs. Four years into a social justice movement in which private and public funders vowed to prioritize communities of color, America’s 107 historically Black colleges and universities continue to lack reliable and affordable access to capital. The end of affirmative action in higher education admissions only increases the imperative to close the funding gap for HBCUs, argues Kresge Foundation's Erika Brice in a guest post. “It’s a moment that calls for a response,” says Brice, an alum of Howard University in Washington, DC (for background, see “Social returns on investments in HBCUs rise as affirmative action recedes”). Kresge invested $3.5 million in Reinvestment Fund’s $25 million HBCU Brilliance Fund to help HBCUs restructure their balance sheets, diversify their revenues, upgrade infrastructure and enhance student services. The flexible, mission-driven debt capital represents an underwriting approach that Reinvestment Fund, a community development financial institution, says “better reflects the financial realities of the schools.” The Brilliance Fund will back real estate projects both on and off campus. “Our long term goal is to have HBCUs serve as community anchors,” says Reinvestment Fund’s Damien Wilson. HBCUs generate an estimated $14.8 billion in annual economic impact.
Building equitable food systems with community and reparative capital. On this week’s Agents of Impact Podcast, co-host Sherrell Dorsey chats with Olivia Watkins of Black Farmer Fund. The fund aims to meet the modern needs of Black farmers and food entrepreneurs with affordable capital and technical assistance (for background see, “Black Farmer Fund is reimagining U.S. agricultural finance, on farmers’ terms”).
Pula lands $20 million to offer livestock insurance to smallholder farmers. Insurance tech startup Pula launched in 2015 to provide crop insurance to small scale farmers, 80% of whom lack access to products that protect their incomes from extreme weather events, like drought. The Kenyan company partners with insurers to embed their policies into the costs of the farm inputs farmers buy – when a farmer buys seeds, for example, those seeds come with an insurance policy. Its Series B equity round will support its expansion into livestock insurance. Swiss impact investor BlueOrchard led the round. Along with existing investors, Gates Foundation, Kenyan venture capital firm Hesabu Capital and the IFC also participated (see, "The next big thing is climate adaptation for smallholder farmers").
How innovative financing structures can help close California’s housing gap. The way housing is financed and constructed in the United States has changed little in decades. The result: skyrocketing costs and a nationwide housing shortage. California alone needs an estimated 2.5 million new homes by 2030, with 40% of those units for lower-income households. More than 100 policies adopted by the state in recent years to unwind exclusionary land use practices and increase housing production are unlocking development potential. Private investors and philanthropists have a big role to play in “catalyzing innovative approaches to financing housing to increase the pace of development, including increasing access to capital, reducing financing costs, and seeding novel approaches,” writes Kevin Schuster of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in a guest post on ImpactAlpha.
Alison Lingane, who co-founded Project Equity with Hilary Abell in 2014, is transitioning from her role as chief innovation and investment officer to senior advisor to Project Equity’s Employee Ownership Catalyst Fund… Connectivity Capital is hiring a project manager in Washington, DC… MacArthur Foundation is looking for an awards manager in Chicago… Also in Chicago, Builders Vision is recruiting a vice president for impact measurement and management… Chicago TREND is hiring a senior property manager.
In New Orleans, the city’s housing finance agency has become a “green bank” to underwrite community solar, water treatment projects, and resilience hubs. …
Private equity fund managers looking for value-creation opportunities are increasingly finding their way to impact themes like climate-resilient and sustainable agriculture, employee engagement …
ImpactAlpha, January 19 – Impact investors have for years debated the need for embedded structures to incentivize impact outcomes for impact fund managers. …
ImpactAlpha, Dec. 15 – The $4 trillion muni market is so big that small movements in the pricing of bonds can mean shifts of …
ImpactAlpha, November 17 – That women are more adversely affected by climate change is well established (in impact and development circles at any …
This week’s Agents of Impact Call continued a tradition started nearly a decade ago by Fran Seegull of the US Impact Investing Alliance …
ImpactAlpha, Sept. 29 – It’s the age-old struggle: labor vs capital, workers vs. owners. But what happens when employees get a stake in the …
ImpactAlpha, August 25 – A growing ecosystem of Native-led entrepreneurs, lenders, financial intermediaries and nonprofits are driving Indian Country’s emerging economy. “It’s kind …
ImpactAlpha, July 28 – Most historically Black colleges and universities were formed during the Reconstruction era. In the more than a century since, Spelman, …
ImpactAlpha, Jun. 22 – Even as some politicians ramp up anti-ESG rhetoric, asset owners and allocators are signaling an appetite for investment strategies …
ImpactAlpha, Mar. 31 – The search for a universal metric to guide investments in racial justice and equitable wealth-building was…aspirational. “We are still a …
ImpactAlpha. Feb. 24 – “A labor market where workers have more opportunities and have more power and have more leverage is a good …
🎧 This Week in Impact. Host Brian Walsh takes up ImpactAlpha’s top stories with editor David Bank. Up this week: federal funds to …
The era of cake-ism (as in having it and eating it, too) has come to an inglorious end. “I think we’re in an …
Host Brian Walsh dives into ImpactAlpha’s top stories, with commentary from editor David Bank. Up this week: Tracking the players building the US’s …
ImpactAlpha podcasts are back! We’re pleased to share our revamped interview show, Agents of Impact, hosted by David Bank and Sherrell Dorsey, founder …
Impact(ed) is part of the ImpactAlpha Podcast Network, a set of shows hosted and produced by leading voices in impact and sustainable investing, …
On This Week in Impact, Brian Walsh dives into some of ImpactAlpha’s top stories, with commentary from editor David Bank. This week: the …
Venture capital invested nearly $500 billion in 2022. By investing into startups seeking transformational scale, successful venture-backed companies have the potential to change …
ImpactAlpha, Dec. 29 – “Net zero is not going to get us anywhere,” Ariane Mahler of Veridien Global Investors told David Bank of ImpactAlpha …
ImpactAlpha, Dec. 22 – Diverse innovators building for all customers in large industries like digital health, fintech and the future of work have been …
The numbers tell the story: overall attendance at COP28 is up threefold from last year – and the number of fossil fuel lobbyists …
Private foundations collectively control more than a trillion dollars of capital invested across a variety of traditional asset classes. A small portion of …
ImpactAlpha’s Amy Cortese speaks with Full Cycle’s Stephan Nicoleau at the start of COP 28 to hear what he’s expecting – and hoping …
Editor’s Note: This article is part of a partnership between ImpactAlpha and Mission Investors Exchange (MIE) to present new ideas and perspectives in …
The way housing is financed and constructed in the United States has experienced little change in decades, leading to skyrocketing costs, barriers to …
“One million lives touched.” “800 jobs created.” “50,000 acres of land restored.” Capital allocators often see these types of punchy headlines in the …
Impact Frontier’s Impact Reporting Norms target a leverage point in the impact investing system: impact reporting. They promise to provide greater clarity and …
Ashish Kumar is a long-time climate investor and a market / ecosystem builder. He is a strategic advisor to Mati Carbon. This month, …
In one of Puerto Rico’s poorest neighborhoods, you can find what economists might call a “green shoot.” The plan for Oasis, a six-acre, …
Development finance institutions like to style themselves as the original impact investors. It was Lord Reith, the first chairman of the UK’s development …
To achieve stated climate goals, the U.S. government is embarking on what should be the largest coordination of private and public capital aimed …
In a world in which the UN SDG financing gap continues to grow, we face a double hurdle: blended finance is still struggling …
As more investment firms launch impact funds, it has become increasingly difficult for institutional allocators to identify the most qualified fund managers to …
Measure what matters. Disclosures are key. Transparency leads to accountability. Which investor, and in fact regulator, wouldn’t agree with these common-sense business mantras …
“We need to invest in life, rather than expensive infrastructure investments,” Anne van Leeuwen, a founding farmer from the European Alliance for Regenerative Agriculture, pleaded …
The winner of a contest to sharpen the impact lens of students through deal sourcing and diligence was a team from London Business …
ImpactAlpha, January 26 – Ines Schiller got the idea for seaweed tampons while training in South Africa to be a marine environment guide. …
ImpactAlpha, Dec. 23 – Bold leaders. Taking action. Driving impact. That’s the tagline we’ve used for the dozens of Agents of Impact we profiled …
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. It is republished …
Sustainable development? “More of the same.” Forest carbon credits? “Outside-imposed extraction.” Impact investing? “Are we really going far enough? Or are we just …
ImpactAlpha, September 8 — In 15 years in impact investing, Christopher Bentley noticed “a lot of for-profit companies focused on the criminal justice …
ImpactAlpha, August 18 – Monica Brand Engel’s advice to impact investors is this: Imperfect execution is ok. “Authentic impact is about accepting imperfection …
ImpactAlpha, Aug. 11 – Samuel Yeboah isn’t discouraged by the economic storm battering his home country of Ghana and many other emerging economies. “As …
Many investors look at promising new climate solutions and say, ‘Great, come back to me when you have traction.’ Azolla Ventures is more …
ImpactAlpha, June 30 – The first thing that Katherine Stodulka does when you meet her is suggest you meet someone else. Then she’ll …
ImpactAlpha, May 26 – A decade ago, investors pushed back against the loan products Jessica Espinoza was designing for female business owners as …
ImpactAlpha, May 12 – Nigeria-born climate entrepreneur and “professional nomad” Aina Abiodun is bullish on place-based climate innovation. “There is nothing more urgent than …
Corporate sustainability initiatives have exceptionally low success rates. New research from Bain & Company found that of 300 companies pushing for sustainability shifts internally, …