Shutdown of Participant Media challenges other investors to drive impact through film. When Ava DuVernay made her 2019 series “When They See Us” about the five Black teens convicted of a rape they didn’t commit, Participant Media helped her get it in front of tens of millions of Neflix viewers. Alongside the film, Participant collaborated with Color of Change on a directory of local prosecutors to highlight racist practices. Former prosecutor Linda Fairstein, who pressed the "Exonerated Five" case, resigned from two nonprofit boards. News broke this week that Participant is shutting down. The social impact production house backed by billionaire Jeff Skoll was known for social-action initiatives that accompanied films such as "The Help", “Spotlight” and “An Inconvenient Truth,” one of the most successful documentaries in Hollywood history. “It is the right time for me to evaluate my next chapter and approach to tackling the pressing issues of our time,” Skoll said.
Prime Coalition launches Trellis Climate to finance first-of-a-kind climate tech deployments. Boston-based Prime Coalition has spent more than a decade marshaling risk-tolerant capital to bridge funding gaps for early stage climate tech through Prime Impact Fund and Azolla Ventures. With Trellis Climate, the nonprofit is expanding to later-stage climate tech ventures that are building their first commercial plants. These first-of-a-kind projects, or FOAKs, are notoriously hard to finance. FOAKs don’t fit the venture capital model, but are considered too risky for commercial lenders. “This first-of-a-kind funding gap is a big one, and now is the time to solve it,” Trellis Climate’s Lara Pierpoint told ImpactAlpha.
Spring Meetings yield green shoots of development finance reform at the World Bank. It’s been less than a year since Ajay Banga took over as president of the World Bank; he immediately faced intense pressure to modernize the bank’s policies and operations to facilitate more and fairer capital flows for emerging economies’ intensifying development and climate needs. At the annual Spring meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Washington, DC, this week, even bank critics saw signs of progress on financial system reforms, sovereign debt distress and development finance impact transparency. “This agenda at the World Bank is starting to bear some real fruit and reforms,” observed Alexia Latortue, the US Treasury’s assistant secretary for international trade and development. Among the developments: an update to the bank’s mission statement to include "ending extreme poverty and boosting prosperity on a livable planet." An agreement to offer debt repayment suspensions to the most vulnerable countries in the event of a natural disaster. And an overhaul of the bank’s guarantee business with the goal of tripling guarantees to unlock private investment in emerging economies by 2030.
Former Shell CEO Ben van Beurden joins KKR as a climate senior advisor… Novata appoints Joel Raha, former VP of engineering at Alloy, as chief technology officer, and Jeanne Lee, previously with Coursera, as head of sales in the Asia Pacific region… Christina Shih, previously with the News Revenue Hub, joins Press Forward as associate director… American Family Insurance promotes Nyra Jordan to vice president of community and social impact associate.
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: In this conclusion to ImpactAlpha’s four-part Macro Impact series, contributing editor Rob Brown parses the economic signals for public and private …
Editor’s note: This guest post is sponsored by Impact Ventures by J&J Foundation, which supports ImpactAlpha’s Investing in Health coverage. In partnership with …
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 …
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 …
Shutdown of Participant Media challenges other investors to drive impact through film. When Ava DuVernay made her 2019 series “When They See Us” about the five Black teens convicted of a rape they didn’t commit, Participant Media helped her get it in front of tens of millions of Neflix viewers. Alongside the film, Participant collaborated with Color of Change on a directory of local prosecutors to highlight racist practices. Former prosecutor Linda Fairstein, who pressed the "Exonerated Five" case, resigned from two nonprofit boards. News broke this week that Participant is shutting down. The social impact production house backed by billionaire Jeff Skoll was known for social-action initiatives that accompanied films such as "The Help", “Spotlight” and “An Inconvenient Truth,” one of the most successful documentaries in Hollywood history. “It is the right time for me to evaluate my next chapter and approach to tackling the pressing issues of our time,” Skoll said.
Prime Coalition launches Trellis Climate to finance first-of-a-kind climate tech deployments. Boston-based Prime Coalition has spent more than a decade marshaling risk-tolerant capital to bridge funding gaps for early stage climate tech through Prime Impact Fund and Azolla Ventures. With Trellis Climate, the nonprofit is expanding to later-stage climate tech ventures that are building their first commercial plants. These first-of-a-kind projects, or FOAKs, are notoriously hard to finance. FOAKs don’t fit the venture capital model, but are considered too risky for commercial lenders. “This first-of-a-kind funding gap is a big one, and now is the time to solve it,” Trellis Climate’s Lara Pierpoint told ImpactAlpha.
Spring Meetings yield green shoots of development finance reform at the World Bank. It’s been less than a year since Ajay Banga took over as president of the World Bank; he immediately faced intense pressure to modernize the bank’s policies and operations to facilitate more and fairer capital flows for emerging economies’ intensifying development and climate needs. At the annual Spring meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Washington, DC, this week, even bank critics saw signs of progress on financial system reforms, sovereign debt distress and development finance impact transparency. “This agenda at the World Bank is starting to bear some real fruit and reforms,” observed Alexia Latortue, the US Treasury’s assistant secretary for international trade and development. Among the developments: an update to the bank’s mission statement to include "ending extreme poverty and boosting prosperity on a livable planet." An agreement to offer debt repayment suspensions to the most vulnerable countries in the event of a natural disaster. And an overhaul of the bank’s guarantee business with the goal of tripling guarantees to unlock private investment in emerging economies by 2030.
Former Shell CEO Ben van Beurden joins KKR as a climate senior advisor… Novata appoints Joel Raha, former VP of engineering at Alloy, as chief technology officer, and Jeanne Lee, previously with Coursera, as head of sales in the Asia Pacific region… Christina Shih, previously with the News Revenue Hub, joins Press Forward as associate director… American Family Insurance promotes Nyra Jordan to vice president of community and social impact associate.
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: In this conclusion to ImpactAlpha’s four-part Macro Impact series, contributing editor Rob Brown parses the economic signals for public and private …
Editor’s note: This guest post is sponsored by Impact Ventures by J&J Foundation, which supports ImpactAlpha’s Investing in Health coverage. In partnership with …
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 …
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 …
Cindy Whitehead made waves and faced challenges in marketing the Pink Pill, a female sex-drive drug, as founder and CEO of Sprout Pharmaceuticals. Her new company, the Pink Ceiling, is launching the Pinkubator to mentor and seed women-focused start-ups in a male-dominated venture capital world. The Pinkubator has already registered seven companies at its workspace in North Carolina’s Research Triangle.
Photo credit: Sprout Pharmaceuticals
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