Happy Tuesday, Agents of Impact – welcome to this week’s edition of ImpactAlpha Open.
First up: Meet catalytic climate investors in two (virtual) conversations this week:
🗺️ Mapping opportunities for catalytic climate capital. ImpactAlpha’s first Agents of Impact Call of the season will explore effective strategies for bridging climate capital gaps in emerging markets, low-income communities, climate adaptation and climate justice. Catch up quickly: “Measuring and valuing climate adaptation to mobilize capital for low-carbon development,” and “The Climate Finance Tracker’s data-driven map for catalytic climate investors (Q&A).”
- Who: BlocPower’s Donnel Baird, Shell Foundation’s Ashish Kumar, Jonathan Phillips of Duke University’s Energy Access Program and Vibrant Data Labs’ Eric Berlow will join ImpactAlpha’s Amy Cortese and David Bank (This Agents of Impact Call is sponsored by the Catalytic Capital Consortium and is free and open to all).
- Answer the Call, Wednesday, Sept. 14, at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm London. RSVP today.
🍌 The power of catalytic capital to reduce food waste (co-hosted by ImpactAlpha and ReFED). Impact investors are deploying creative and flexible investments to fill the annual $16 billion gap needed to cut food waste in half by 2030.
- Who: I’ll be moderating a conversation with Prime Coalition’s Sarah Kearney, Spring Point Partners’ Margot Kane and ReFED’s Angel Veza.
- Join the discussion, Thursday, Sept. 15, at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm London. Register today.
In this week’s newsletter:
- ESG theatrics;
- Helping African farmers produce more;
- Carbon footprint of fish; and
- Imperfect food acquisition.
– Dennis Price
Must-reads on ImpactAlpha
- Resilient infrastructure. Varuna’s Seyi Fabode charted three paradigm shifts for building resilient water systems in Jackson, Miss. and other U.S. cities. (Open)
- God save the King – and the planet. Peter McKillop of Climate & Capital traces Queen Elizabeth’s quiet climate journey and the opportunity now for her son and successor. (Open)
- Impact data wars. Dow Jones raises the stakes in the ESG data competition with news-driven ratings, reports ImpactAlpha’s David Bank.
- ESG theatrics. In Texas, once self-styled as a bastion of free markets and friendly regulation, a down-ballot politician now wields the power of the state purse to whack companies into submission for not toeing the party line, details Manifest Social’s Ryon Harms. (Open)
- Deals making news: Kapor Capital tapped outside investors for the first time to raise its $126 million third fund. And New Island Capital is winding down and moving its assets to Grounded Capital.
Stakeholder media for stakeholder capitalism
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Agents of Impact
🌱 Farmerline’s Alloysius Attah: Helping farmers in Africa produce and sell more food
The climate disruption is spurring a long overdue upgrade for 500 million smallholder farmers, who produce up to 80% of the world’s food. To weather the shocks, farmers need high-quality seeds and fertilizer, training and data, and access to markets and finance.
Farmerline, based in Accra, Ghana “is using digital tools to aggregate demand and working with third-party logistics companies to make sure that the chasm between farmers these very valuable resources is bridged by getting them all they need at the right time,” says Alloysius Attah, who founded the company in 2013 with $600 and 800 Ghanaian farmers.
- Keep reading, “Farmerline’s Alloysius Attah: Helping farmers in Africa produce and sell more food,” by Jessica Pothering, and like the story on Instagram.
🏃♀️ On the move
- Lara Metcalf, ex- of The Social Entrepreneurs’ Fund, joins the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation as managing director. “By deploying traditional venture capital models to support early-stage non-profits and mission-driven for-profits, DRK amplifies their probability of success and positive impact,” said Metcalf, who helped build the Pay for Success sector at Social Finance.
- Amalia Kontesi, ex- of JPMorgan Chase, joins Google as head of social impact communications for Europe, the Middle East and Africa “to help tell the story of the company’s impact on customers, users and communities across EMEA,” she said.
- Sarah Kaplan is promoted to partner at Cutting Edge Counsel. Kaplan has more than a decade of experience serving a wide range of cooperatives, including worker, consumer, agricultural, platform, investment, and multi-stakeholder cooperatives, including limited cooperative associations.
Deal Spotlight
🍌 Misfits Market acquires Imperfect Foods to consolidate the food-waste reduction market
New Jersey-based Misfits Market acquired San Francisco-based Imperfect Foods, representing “one of the few exits in the food waste space showing investors realizable returns,” food waste nonprofit ReFED’s Alejandro Enamorado told ImpactAlpha. By delivering foods deemed too “ugly” for supermarkets to consumers at more affordable prices, Imperfect Foods and Misfits Market have redirected nearly 500 million pounds of food that may otherwise have gone to waste.
- Get the background on the deal. And check out all of ImpactAlpha’s food waste innovation coverage.
Six Signals
🌱 Resilience and adaptation. A new tool lets U.S. communities view their risk levels for extreme weather events – and build a resilience plan. (GlobalChange.gov)
🐟 Seafood emissions. What is the carbon footprint of fish? It depends on the fish. (Ourworldindata.org)
🫐 Solar and agriculture. How mounting solar panels in wild blueberry patches affects income and production. (Energy News Network)
👷🏿♂️ Green jobs. More people worldwide now work in clean energy than in fossil fuels. (Quartz)
🚗 Winning the traffic war. U.S. road deaths are soaring. Why Japan’s roadways are so much safer. (CityLab)
😢 ESG’s dismal upside. Investors who are down in the dumps tend to lean toward more sustainable purchases, according to a new study. (Bloomberg)
Get in the Game
💼 Step up
- Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is hiring a manager of special projects in Redwood City, Calif.
- BlackRock seeks a sustainable investing research and strategy associate in New York.
- RS Group, a Hong Kong-based family office focused on sustainable development, is recruiting a director and an associate director of investments.
🤝 Meet up
- Power for All is hosting, “Powering jobs census 2022: The energy access workforce,” Monday, Sept. 19.
- Registration is open for Impact State of Mind 2022, a three-day event on climate action and the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals, Sept. 21-23 in New York.
- And don’t miss this ImpactAlpha partner event: The Regenerative Food Systems Investment Forum is set for Oct. 12-13 in Denver. Get 15% off with code IMPACT.
🎬 Take action
- DivInc’s Women in Tech Accelerator is accepting applications for its spring cohort. Apply today.
- Nonprofit Zebras Unite is crowdsourcing board nominations through Tuesday, Sept. 20. Go ahead, nominate someone!
- The U.S. Department of Agriculture has $400 million available to create at least six regional food centers. Um, go for it.
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Til next Tuesday!
