Hi there, Agent of Impact! Welcome to ImpactAlpha Open, our free weekly newsletter to keep you in the loop and ahead of the curve in impact investing and sustainable finance.
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In this week’s Open:
- A fractional pathway to home ownership
- Climate United’s $7 billion strategy to mainstream green lending
- Clarifying impact-first investing
- The Call: Commercial investors boost blended finance
Let’s dig in. – Dennis Price
Must-reads on ImpactAlpha
- Beth Bafford on Climate United’s $7 billion strategy to mainstream green lending. The Environmental Protection Agency set off a scramble last year with its call for proposals to manage the $14 billion National Clean Investment Fund, or NCIF. When the dust settled, $7 billion went to Climate United, a coalition of Calvert Impact, Community Preservation Corp. and North Carolina-based community development lender Self-Help. “From the beginning, when the EPA put out their implementation framework, we saw a picture being painted of the kind of market infrastructure that we have seen for a long time from our perch at Calvert impact,” Calvert’s Beth Bafford tells ImpactAlpha’s Amy Cortese.Read the Q+A.
- Elemental impact. The Coalition for Green Capital, another NCIF recipient, distributed $100 million to Elemental Impact as a sub-awardee. The Honolulu-based nonprofit will channel the funds towards place-based climate tech deployments involving clean energy, water, sustainable agriculture and industrial applications. Dig in.
- A fractional pathway to home ownership. First-time home buyers in Raleigh-Durham and Charlotte, NC, are getting a new path to owning their own house – or at least a fraction of it. With $2 million from individual and impact investors, Raleigh-based Ownify has helped seven first-time homebuyers, or Ownis, gain a foothold in the housing market, reports Roodgally Senatus. The company says its model represents an equitable upgrade from predatory rent-to-own models, many of which lock aspiring owners into long-term lease agreements with unfairly high rents. Get the details.
- Fundraising and other impact dealmaking in Latin America. The first wave of impact investors in Latin America built a big tent for individuals and institutions to mobilize capital for solutions to pressing social and climate challenges. Asset managers built funds. Allocators committed capital. And entrepreneurs raised financing for promising social and climate startups. The next task is to expand the tent even further, I reported from Latimpacto’s annual conference in Oaxaca. Vamos.
- Clarifying an impact-first investing philosophy. Investors who prioritize positive social and environmental goals and outcomes over profits tend to catch grief. Some investors criticize the impact-first method as weak and financially undisciplined. Frustrated founders insist their climate- or community-friendly products or services should compensate for lackluster financials. Neither assessment reflects an accurate understanding of what impact-first investors do, say Diane Isenberg and Greg Neichin, managing directors at the impact-first family office Ceniarth. Hear them out.
- Boosting gender lens transparency and intentionality. 2X Global launched its third-party certification process at its global summit in Nairobi this week to bring transparency and rigor to the growing field of gender-lens investing, reports Jessica Pothering. The organization has been working since 2018 to encourage the global capital markets to direct more capital to and for women, and toward the issues impacting them. Check it out.
Agents of Impact
🏃 On the move
- Donald Felix, formerly with Citizens Financial Group, will become president and CEO of Carver Federal Savings Bank in November
- Vision Ridge Partners tapped Pete Murphy, previously with Nuveen Private Equity Impact, as head of impact.
- The Pivot Fund added Susan Smith Richardson, previously with The Guardian, as managing director.
The Week’s Podcast
🎧 This Week in Impact: The ownership economy arrives
Host Brian Walsh takes up ImpactAlpha’s top stories with editor David Bank. Up this week: clips from this week’s Agents of Impact Call (see below); the ownership economy comes into its own in Denver; and finding the alpha in climate investing at Climate Week NYC.
- Listen to the new episode of This Week in Impact.Get the podcast in your feed by subscribing on Apple or Spotify.
The Week’s Call
💲 Agents of Impact Call: How commercial investors are crafting structures to blend finance (video)
Blended financing deals are rebounding, with a twist. This time, it is commercial investors who are stepping up to drive some of the biggest blended-finance funds for climate and development.
- Zooming in. Financial institutions like Allianz and Mitsubishi UJF Financial Group, hand-tied by strict regulatory rules around risk-taking, are overcoming obstacles to back much needed climate and development interventions. They’re doing it by working with development finance institutions, multilateral development banks, impact-first investors and philanthropic organizations on funds and deal structures with built-in risk buffers like guarantees, insurance and first-loss reserves.
- Investment-grade. “Institutions have wanted to put money behind the Sustainable Development Goals, but need investment-grade opportunities to do it at scale,” observed Debra Schwartz of the MacArthur Foundation on this week’s Agents of Impact Call, “Blending billions.” Schwarz was joined by Climate Fund Managers’ Rajashree Padmanabhi, Mitsubishi UFJ’s Ariane Pevide, and Convergence’s Nnamdi Igbokwe, in conversation with ImpactAlpha’s David Bank and Dennis Price. (Disclosure: MacArthur Foundation is a mainstay of the Catalytic Capital Consortium, which supports ImpactAlpha’s coverage of catalytic capital.)
- Read the recap and watch the video replay.
Get in the Game
💼 Step up
- Tufts University is seeking a part-time lecturer or professor on community-based investing in Medford, MA.
- The ImPact is looking for a director of operations in New York or remote.
- Matrix Renewables is searching for an investment associate in Miami.
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🤝 Meet up
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- September 25: Norselab Impact Day (Oslo)
- October 7-9: AFSIC Investing in Africa (London)
- October 23-24: GIIN Impact Summit (Amsterdam)
- October 28-30: SOCAP Global (San Francisco)
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