Impact Management
Impact Management | November 21, 2023
Private equity is leaving billions of dollars in sustainability value on the table
Private equity has a significant opportunity to create financial and societal value through sustainability. PE firms that invest in improving the management and …
Impact Investing | November 16, 2023
JFF Ventures aligns venture capital with a national nonprofit to invest in the future of work
ImpactAlpha, Nov. 16 – Creating the tools and technologies to move more than 100 million low-income Americans comfortably into the middle class with …
Dealflow | November 3, 2023
Deal spotlight: Acumen breaks the ice on failures in impact investing
ImpactAlpha, November 3 – Impact investors deserve credit for pushing business and finance to be more mindful, accountable and transparent. Acumen this week …
Impact Management | November 2, 2023
In impact investing, failure is good – if we learn and share the lessons
In the US, venture backed investments are failing at rates not seen since the Great Recession. The market forces slamming these companies are …
Corporate Impact | October 25, 2023
Investors push corporations to better manage increasingly scarce water resources
ImpactAlpha, October 25 – Corporations are the largest consumers of water globally, which sets them up for conflict and risk as water scarcity …
Impact Investing | October 4, 2023
Using integrated analysis to inform impact investing decisions
Over the past weeks, ImpactAlpha offered a sampling of video highlights from the new open-access course from Impact Frontiers and Impact Capital Managers, …
Impact Management | September 21, 2023
Messiness, Mutuality and Methodology: Three tips for measuring impact
Note: This is an abridged version for ImpactAlpha. For all 10 tips, please visit this article on Medium.com. At the end of 2022, …
Impact Management | September 20, 2023
The $100 billion opportunity in climate-finance accountability
ImpactAlpha, September 20 – Developed nations have pledged (but not delivered) $100 billion annually to help low and middle-income countries adapt to climate …
Impact Investing | September 11, 2023
How some US companies are preparing for mandatory impact reporting (Q&A)
ImpactAlpha, Sept. 11 – Markets around the globe are likely to require corporations to report on their social and environmental impact before the end …
Impact Management | August 31, 2023
Is Europe’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation delivering on its promise?
The European Union’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation, known as SFDR, is making waves in the investment industry. The legislative measure, introduced in 2019, …
Impact Management | August 14, 2023
Getting started with impact ratings
Impact for Decision-Making, Part 2 In part 1 of Impact for Decision-Making, Impact Frontiers and Impact Capital Managers made the case for “impact-financial …
Photo by Shivendu Shukla on Unsplash
Good Jobs | July 27, 2023
In a strong labor market, investors look for companies to outcompete through ‘quality jobs’
ImpactAlpha, Jul. 27 – The Great Resignation turned out to be instead The Great Reshuffling. And as workers reshuffled back, they looked for a …
Impact Management | July 27, 2023
How three impact investors engage their most important stakeholders to validate impact
An increasingly important question for impact investors is how to validate that their investments are having the intended impact on people or the …
Impact Management | July 26, 2023
‘A’ for Effort: Private equity giants Bain, Apollo, TPG and KKR grade their own impact initiatives
ImpactAlpha, July 26 – A billion-dollar impact fund used to be an industry milestone. Now $1 billion is table stakes for legacy private equity …
Impact Investing | July 26, 2023
Impact for decision-making, Part 1
New to impact investing? Or just want to improve your game? We’ve got you covered. Over the next few weeks, ImpactAlpha will offer …
Corporate Impact | July 17, 2023
Flex of worker power raises the stakes for quality jobs
Investors focused on societal impact are often concerned with corporate treatment of workers. To assess job quality performance across a portfolio, they generally …
Dealflow | June 12, 2023
Generation clinches $1.5 billion for climate fund with impact incentives
ImpactAlpha, June 12 – Just Climate, the climate-dedicated asset manager launched a year and a half ago by Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management, …
Corporate Impact | June 1, 2023
Impact reports from Tesla, Warby Parker and others tout climate and community solutions
Tired: ESG risk reporting. Wired: Reports on company impact. Almost nine in 10 companies in the S&P 500 now regularly issue some sort …
Impact Management | May 24, 2023
Tipping Point Fund backs field-building efforts of GIIN, The ImPact and ShareAction
ImpactAlpha, May 24 – Impact investing collaborative Tipping Point Fund has provided grants to five organizations in support of new field-building initiatives, including …
Impact Management | May 23, 2023
UN metrics measure enterprise impact on the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals
Time is running out to meet the ambitious UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set for 2030. There are real concerns that data related …
Impact Management | May 17, 2023
10 fund managers that are outperforming – in managing impact
ImpactAlpha, May 16 – Some fund managers link staff incentives to impact results. Others verify outcomes with target stakeholders. Many regularly assess impact risk. …
Impact Voices | May 17, 2023
Why don’t more impact fund managers tie compensation to impact? Let’s find out.
Impact investing has now reached more than $1 trillion in assets under management. With this growth, concerns over “impact washing” have also grown. …
Impact Management | May 15, 2023
Five ways to improve impact measurement and accountability
A push by fund index providers to tighten the criteria for what qualifies as an environmental, social and governance fund has led to …
Impact Management | May 15, 2023
How investors can better assess risk to impact
Investors routinely examine the risk of achieving their financial objectives, and screen investments for ESG risk, but how do impact investors consider the …
Impact Management | May 15, 2023
Leveraging ESG data for impact investing
Management guru Peter Drucker is credited with the popular maxim “what gets measured gets managed.” This holds true also in impact investing where …
Impact Management | May 9, 2023
EverFi, Vital Farms and hundreds of exits provide fresh evidence of ‘impact alpha’
ImpactAlpha, May 9 – When educational services provider EverFi was acquired by Blackbaud last year for $750 million, TPG Rise roughly doubled its …
Impact Management | April 19, 2023
Investor Contribution: The elephant in the room no longer?
When do investors change real-world outcomes? Imagine two investors that publish impact reports both stating that their investments created 10,000 new jobs. In …
Impact Management | April 18, 2023
S&P Global leads BlueMark’s $10 million raise for impact verification and benchmarks
Concerns about accusations of ‘impact washing’ is driving demand for third-party assessments of impact practices and reporting. New York-based BlueMark raised $10 million …
Impact Investing | April 12, 2023
Four ways foundations and family offices can expand their mission-related investing
ImpactAlpha, April 12 — More foundations are stepping up to align their endowments with their philanthropic goals with “mission-related investments,” or MRIs. That’s …
Call Recording | March 31, 2023
Metrics Madness: Wealth, ownership and ‘quality adjusted life years’ (video)
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 …
Metrics Madness | March 28, 2023
Chasing the holy grail of a universal metric for racial equity and wealth-building
ImpactAlpha, Mar. 28 – If the world manages in the coming decades to avert the worst-case climate catastrophe, it will be the result …
Impact Management | March 22, 2023
Metrics and mood music in impact reports from Founders First, Mercy Corps Ventures, Upstart Co-Lab and ALIVE
ImpactAlpha, March 22 – One fund tracks the number of informal-economy jobs its portfolio companies have formalized. Another firm reports how its investments improve …
Impact Management | March 22, 2023
Impact Reporting: Frequently asked questions (and answers!) from impact investors
Impact fund managers are increasingly expected to provide their investors (i.e., institutional investors and allocators) with reporting that offers visibility into their portfolio’s …
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Impact Management | March 21, 2023
Ten outcomes and three levers for investors in racial and economic equity
ImpactAlpha, March 21 — Moral imperative? The threat of economic instability? Or the unrealized economic potential of our nation’s diversity? Whatever their motivations, …
Metrics Madness | March 20, 2023
Q&A with Napoleon Wallace: Tracking investment theses against the promise of Reconstruction
Napoleon Wallace has a challenge. After decades of developing racial equity and economic development strategies he knows what he is looking for in …
Impact Management | March 20, 2023
Just Capital and Ford Foundation set a research agenda for human capital management
ImpactAlpha, March 20 – As much as 90% of the value of S&P 500 companies comes from “intangible” assets, most importantly talent. Yet …
Impact Investing | March 9, 2023
Eight practices to transform assets under management into resources for an inclusive and sustainable economy
Canadian businesswoman Zita Cobb returned to her hometown on Fogo Island off the coast of Newfoundland and helped remake the isolated former fishing …
ESG | March 3, 2023
ImpactAlpha Deal Spotlight: ESG in private markets
ImpactAlpha, March 3 — Limited partners in venture capital and private equity funds are deemphasizing ESG considerations, according to a survey by Adams …
Impact Management | February 22, 2023
Streamlined, standardized and benchmarked: Optimizing impact data for capital markets
ImpactAlpha, Feb. 22 – It’s the data wonks’ time to shine. With more than $1 trillion in impact investing assets under management, investors are …
Pulled from "Scaling Impact" cover
Impact Voices | February 16, 2023
Six financial paradigm shifts needed to scale impact
Over my 20-plus years as a professional working on economic development, development finance, and impact investing, as both an investor and an advisor, …
Kelly McCarthy
Impact Management | February 8, 2023
Q&A with Kelly McCarthy: Architect of IRIS+ is ready to put impact management theory into practice
ImpactAlpha, Feb. 8 – It’s not yet the holy grail of impact measurement, but IRIS+ has given investors a starting point for comparable …
Impact Management | February 6, 2023
Accounting for impact at Candide, MicroVest, Echoing Green and other investment managers
ImpactAlpha, Feb. 6. 2023 – The age of ad hoc impact reporting may be coming to an end. In the meantime, we’ve taken a …
Frontier and Growth Markets | January 30, 2023
What 672 private debt and equity funds show about impact investing in emerging markets
ImpactAlpha, Jan. 30 – After a pandemic-related pause, institutional investors are again moving money into private impact funds in emerging markets. But only a …
Impact Management | January 25, 2023
To catalyze climate capital, development finance institutions are pressed to ‘publish what you fund’
ImpactAlpha, January 25 – Six trillion dollars. That’s roughly how much is needed annually to fight climate change and meet the U.N.’s Sustainable …
Impact Management | January 9, 2023
Searching for signals in impact reports from Elevar, Veris, Calvert and other investment managers
ImpactAlpha, Jan. 9 – The first mandate of an impact investment fund: Deliver actual impact through its investments. And the corollary: Effectively communicate that …