The Brief
The Brief | February 6, 2023
The Brief: Impact reports roundup, Ariel’s Project Black, solar financing in the U.S. and Nigeria, small-scale fusion, investing in economic mobility
Greetings, Agents of Impact! Featured: Impact Measurement and Management Accounting for impact at Candide, MicroVest, Echoing Green and other investment managers. The age …
The Brief | February 3, 2023
The Week in Impact Investing: Dilemmas
TGIF, Agents of Impact! 🗣Leaders and laggards. In his business-school classic, “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” the late Clay Christensen explains how successful companies fail …
The Brief | February 2, 2023
The Brief: Optimizing catalytic capital, Just Climate’s first deals, Jonathan Rose’s affordable housing preservation, impact growth capital in India
Greetings, Agents of Impact! It was great to see so many of you on yesterday’s lively call on investable opportunities for racial equity …
The Brief | February 1, 2023
The Brief: Today’s Call: Muni Impact, ESG in European VC, banking Egypt’s unbanked, decarbonizing buildings, flood insurance, S-shaped energy transition
Greetings, Agents of Impact! 👋 Hop on The Call. Join hundreds of other Agents of Impact on today’s Call to explore opportunities in …
Photo credit: Bolita
The Brief | January 31, 2023
The Brief: Municipal finance for fiscal justice, financing restoration with future carbon credits, impact notes, green steel, community-led funds
Greetings, Agents of Impact! Featured: Muni Impact Activest’s FIRE strategy seeks to bend the arc of municipal finance toward ‘fiscal justice.’ It’s distressingly …
ImpactAlpha Open | January 31, 2023
ImpactAlpha Open: Quality carbon credits + Black-worker ownership
Greetings, Agents of Impact! Welcome to ImpactAlpha Open. Two quick action items: 👋 Join Agents of Impact Call No. 48. Ryan Bowers of Activest, Diane Manuel of Adasina Social …
The Brief | January 30, 2023
The Brief: Emerging-markets fund rebound, building trust in healthcare, investing in Appalachia, ESG emergency in Oklahoma
Greetings, Agents of Impact! 👋 Join Agents of Impact Call No. 48. Greater Share’s Dana Bezerra will drop in to ImpactAlpha’s call this …
The Brief | January 27, 2023
The Week in Impact Investing: Integrity
TGIF, Agents of Impact! 🗣 Good faith. Microfinance. Opportunity zones. Carbon markets. Debt-for-nature swaps. Before most of the public even understands them, innovative …
Photo credit: Ecozen
The Brief | January 26, 2023
The Brief: Carbon credit crossroads, solar irrigation in India, smart thermostats in Europe, financing employee ownership, disability disclosure
Greetings, Agents of Impact! Featured: Carbon Markets Voluntary carbon markets face a reckoning over credit quality and environmental impact. Are carbon markets a …
The Brief | January 25, 2023
The Brief: Development finance transparency, electric pay-as-you-mow, diabetes care in India, Generate’s latest raise, impact policy lookahead
Greetings, Agents of Impact! 👉 Don’t miss next week’s call. ImpactAlpha is on the hunt for proactive strategies in the $4 trillion municipal …
Photo credit: Meema, an Acceso Impact Fund portfolio company
The Brief | January 24, 2023
The Brief: Municipal bond activism (Q&A), bioplastics and revenue-based loans in Latin America, green bond in Vietnam, GOP governors tack to the center on ESG
Greetings, Agents of Impact! Featured: Muni Impact ‘You can’t do impact on a passive basis’: Q&A with municipal bond investor Eric Glass. At …
ImpactAlpha Open | January 24, 2023
ImpactAlpha Open: New capital decision-makers + inclusive crowdfunding
Happy Tuesday, Agents of Impact! Welcome to ImpactAlpha Open, your weekly dose of ImpactAlpha and other impact investing news and trends. 👋 You’re invited to Call No. 48: …
The Brief | January 23, 2023
The Brief: Mitigating currency risks, climate insurance in Brazil, green coffee in Rwanda, securitization for adaptation
Greetings, Agents of Impact! 👋 Call No. 48: Investable opportunities in high-impact municipal finance. Fiscal justice, community resilience and mispriced risks are creating …
The Brief | January 20, 2023
The Week in Impact Investing: Cred
TGIF, Agents of Impact! 🗣Ground truth. As delegates headed to Davos this week to talk climate and collaboration, The New York Times reported from Ecuador on …
Photo by World Economic Forum.
The Brief | January 19, 2023
The Brief: Dissing Davos, solar mini-grids in Madagascar, sustainable lithium extraction, Shell’s EV charging acquisition
Greetings, Agents of Impact! Featured: Davos Watch What if they threw an elite global forum in a Swiss ski resort and no one …
Photo by Josiah Farrow on Unsplash
The Brief | January 18, 2023
The Brief: Impact of corporate political contributions, decarbonizing cement, rural banking in Indonesia, wind turbine robots, subscription e-trucking in California
Greetings, Agents of Impact! Featured: ESG and Impact CEOs are signaling their corporate impact – with their political contributions. Some people decry corporate …
Photo by Joshua Woroniecki on Unsplash
The Brief | January 17, 2023
The Brief: Community climate infrastructure, nature-based carbon, women-led tech in Latin America, Cake’s demographic trifecta, B of A’s stakeholder performance
Greetings, Agents of Impact! Featured: Muni Impact Overheard at the Public Finance Conference: Investment opportunities in Emerging Market America. The computer glitch that snarled …
ImpactAlpha Open | January 17, 2023
ImpactAlpha Open: Structuring finance for impact + climate SPACs
Greetings, Agents of Impact! Welcome to this week’s edition of ImpactAlpha Open, our free weekly newsletter of careers, connections and capital opportunities for Agents of …
The Brief | January 13, 2023
The Week in Impact Investing: Catalytic
TGIF, Agents of Impact! 🗣 Impact signals. Venture capital plowed $70.1 billion into climate startups last year, up 89% over 2021. Off-grid energy …
The Brief | January 12, 2023
The Brief: Catalytic capital for scaling, billion-dollar climate funds, diverse asset managers, grid-scale battery storage, costs of the ESG culture wars
Greetings, Agents of Impact! Featured: Scaling Impact Indispensable growth factor for impact funds, strategies and fund managers: catalytic capital. Impact investors often use …
Photo credit: aleksandarlittlewolf on Freepik
The Brief | January 11, 2023
The Brief: GOP’s about-face on business, municipal wastewater-to-value, recycling in Nigeria, hydro power in Cote d’Ivoire, human rights in impact investing
Greetings, Agents of Impact! Featured: Institutional Impact GOP ditches ‘pro-business’ with attacks on ESG that hurt corporations and investors – and red states. The new …
Photo credit: Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribe via Facebook
The Brief | January 10, 2023
The Brief: Deploying community infrastructure, digitalizing India’s shops, sustainable real assets in Germany, inclusive corporate VC, fairness as a service
Greetings, Agents of Impact! Featured: Catalytic Capital Matching local projects with climate capital to deploy community infrastructure. The Great Deployment is on. The …
ImpactAlpha Open | January 10, 2023
ImpactAlpha Open: Inside impact reports + restorative capital
Hi there, Agents of Impact! Welcome to this week’s edition of ImpactAlpha Open, a sampling of the best of ImpactAlpha and other impact investing …
Image by mindandi on Freepik
The Brief | January 9, 2023
The Brief: Inside impact reports, green energy dealflow, healthcare for older women, climate resilience in Madagascar, revenue-based finance in Latin America
Greetings, Agents of Impact! Featured: Impact Management Searching for signals in new impact reports from Elevar, Veris, Calvert and other investment managers. The …
The Brief | January 6, 2023
The Week in impact investing: Deploy
TGIF, Agents of Impact! 🗣 The buildout. Optimism may not be self-fulfilling, but pessimism surely is. That’s why, like many Agents of Impact, …
Photo by Roodgally Senatus, ImpactAlpha.
The Brief | January 5, 2023
The Brief: Electrifying New York’s ‘dollar vans,’ biodiversity startups in Indonesia, affordable school loans in India, sexy circular strategies
Greetings, Agents of Impact! Featured: E-Mobility Electrifying ‘dollar vans’ to boost livelihoods and cut carbon in New York’s transit deserts. Along Flatbush Ave. …
The Brief | January 4, 2023
The Brief: Developing climate project developers and other 2023 climate trends, financial inclusion in rural India, Indonesia’s underbanked, green concrete
Greetings, Agents of Impact! Featured: 2023 Climate Forecast Public and private climate investors are saying, ‘Show me the projects.’ Capital is no longer …
The Brief | January 3, 2023
The Brief: The Liist of new impact funds, sustainable development in Nepal, solar refrigerators, ESG predictions for 2023
Happy New Year, Agents of Impact, and a warm welcome to all of the new subscribers who joined over the holidays. Please reach …
ImpactAlpha Open | January 3, 2023
ImpactAlpha Open: 2023 lookaheads and January’s Liist
Happy New Year, Agent of Impact! Welcome to this week’s (abbreviated edition) of ImpactAlpha Open. We’ll be back next week with a full slate …
The Brief | December 23, 2022
The Brief: A way forward in 2023
TGIF, Agents of Impact! You deserve a break. And we do, too. ImpactAlpha is OoO next week (we’ve scheduled a few special treats …
The Brief | December 22, 2022
The Brief: Looking Ahead to 2023: ESG to Impact
Greetings, Agents of Impact! Thanks to all those who turned out for our lively year-end call to debate the word(s) of the year. …
The Brief | December 21, 2022
The Brief: Looking ahead to 2023: Abundance, ownership and inclusion
Greetings, Agents of Impact! 👋 Hop on today’s Agents of Impact Call. Collaboration? Governance? Catalytic? On our last call of the year, we’ll …
The Brief | December 20, 2022
The Brief: Looking Ahead to 2023: Emerging Markets
Greetings, Agents of Impact! 👋 Call No. 47: Looking ahead. This week’s thematic roundups on ImpactAlpha flag the signals we’ll be watching for …
The Brief | December 19, 2022
The Brief: Looking Ahead to 2023: Climate Finance
Greetings, Agents of Impact! 👋 Call No. 47: What’s The Word? Ownership? Deployment? Risk? Nominate a “Word of the Year” and share how …
The Brief | December 16, 2022
The Week in Impact Investing: Words
TGIF, Agents of Impact! 🗣️ In a word. Each week, we select a word or phrase to tie together the news, capture the …
Solar installations in Vietnam
The Brief | December 15, 2022
The Brief: Just energy transition partnerships, investing in healthy communities, AI for plant-based food, growth lending in Africa, family offices for impact
Greetings, Agents of Impact! Featured: Climate Finance Just Energy Transition Partnerships and other ways to shift climate finance to low-income countries. First came …
The Brief | December 14, 2022
The Brief: Greenwashing graveyard, Elon Musk’s climate risk, HSBC’s natural capital funds, healthcare in Africa, women’s livelihoods, climate resilience debt
Greetings, Agents of Impact! Fusion ignition. “It’s the first time it has ever been done in a laboratory, anywhere in the world,” U.S. …
The Brief | December 13, 2022
The Brief: Jigar Shah’s $140 billion bridge to bankability, narrowing the racial wealth gap, commercializing fusion power, tracking Scope 3 emissions
Greetings, Agents of Impact! Featured: Agents of Impact Podcast Jigar Shah on building a $140 billion ‘bridge to bankability’ for the energy transition …
ImpactAlpha Open | December 13, 2022
ImpactAlpha Open: Manage the impact of investments, better
Hi there, Agents of Impact! Impact investors gathered at the Mission Investors Exchange conference in Baltimore last week to regroup and reimagine investment strategies …
Memphis, Tennessee
The Brief | December 12, 2022
The Brief: Adasina’s fiscal justice strategy, ESG bonds for cities, domestic work in Senegal, carbon credits in India, worker ownership and revenue-based lending
Greetings, Agents of Impact! Featured: Muni Impact What Adasina learned about advancing ‘fiscal justice’ by investing $60 million in muni bonds. Adasina Social …
The Brief | December 9, 2022
The Week in Impact Investing: Proximity
TGIF, Agents of Impact! 🗣 Ground up. Impact investors gathered at the Mission Investors Exchange conference in Baltimore this week to regroup and …
The Brief | December 8, 2022
The Brief: Impact-linked compensation, second-party opinions for green bonds, small-business lending in Africa and Appalachia, disclosing extinction risk
Greetings, Agents of Impact! Featured: Impact Management Tying fund managers’ compensation to impact performance is easier said than done. Fund managers typically get a …
The Brief | December 7, 2022
The Brief: Investing in the creative economy, overheard at Mission Investors Exchange, small-business loans in Colorado, reducing plastic waste in Latin America
Greetings, Agents of Impact! Featured: Overheard at Mission Investors Exchange Upstart Co-Lab’s pipeline of creative economy deals is now an investable impact strategy. …
Photo by MEDA.
The Brief | December 6, 2022
The Brief: New Liist of impact funds, better impact reporting, gender smart in Africa, investing in wildfire prevention, taking on the investment committee
Greetings, Agents of Impact! You may be pleased to learn that our new artificial intelligence overlords are hip to impact investing. Take a …
ImpactAlpha Open | December 6, 2022
ImpactAlpha Open: AI chatbots know impact investing + December’s Liist
December greetings, Agents of Impact! You may be pleased to learn that our new artificial-intelligence overlords are hip to impact investing. Take a …