In the Climate Week mix: Policy tailwinds, green banks, talent pipeline. Hard choices have to be made… about which of the hundreds of Climate Week NYC events to attend. As the rain gave way to sunny skies, so did the gloomy outlook from the United Nations and its less-than-ambitious Climate Ambition Summit. The brighter outlook was palpable all over town among the entrepreneurs, investors, policymakers and experts chomping at the bit to drive the zero-carbon transition.
European Investment Fund plugs €40 million into Blume Equity. Blume is one of a small number of climate tech venture funds with all female founders. The firm invests in growth-stage companies in Europe supporting the transition to a low-carbon economy, such as carbon accounting venture Normative, which helps large companies account for Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions, and Aerones, which makes robotics for wind turbine maintenance. EIF backed Blume as part of its commitment to direct a quarter of its investments to climate and environment-related projects. It joins Swedish pension fund AP4, Visa Foundation, and Impact Engine as an investor in Blume.
Messiness, mutuality and methodology: Three tips for measuring impact. The impact investing advisory firm Candide has moved more than $200 million into 110 social justice-focused companies, funds and other organizations. Its investments include ventures like Totem and Solar Holler and managers like Impact America Fund and Mac Venture Capital. What was the actual impact of those impact investments? Candide’s Jasmine Rashid and team spent the last two years seeking answers to that question for the firm’s first public impact report. In a guest post for ImpactAlpha, Rashid shares tips for designing meaningful impact measurement processes “that serve all stakeholders – not just those providing financial capital.” Among them:
Agents of Impact are remembering and paying tribute to catalyst-at-large Suzanne Biegel, who passed away yesterday. A champion of gender-lens investing and founder of GenderSmart (now part of 2X Global) Biegel created a legacy project, Heading for Change, with her husband, Daniel Maskit (for background see, "With climate + gender fund, Suzanne Biegel is heading for change").
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 …
ImpactAlpha, Feb. 9 – The fatal beating by police of Tyre Nichols in Memphis last month exposed risks to the city’s finances that have …
ImpactAlpha, Nov. 18 – Cities around the U.S. are raising low-cost capital in the municipal bond markets by highlighting intentional efforts to address long-standing …
ImpactAlpha, September 30 – Capital to support women’s economic growth and financial inclusion is flowing – finally! – in many advanced economies. In emerging …
ImpactAlpha, Sept. 19 – Investors, entrepreneurs, corporate executives and world leaders have descended on New York for Climate Week, the annual gathering alongside the …
ImpactAlpha, June 27 – ImpactAlpha’s spring season of Agents of Impact Calls spanned a period of tumult in the financial markets: instability in …
ImpactAlpha, June 3 – Just as investment in financial inclusion in Africa was really ramping up, a market downturn threatens to slow progress. Or …
ImpactAlpha, May 13 – One defining outcome of the pandemic: a boom in entrepreneurship. A record five million businesses were started in the …
David Bank is joined by Marjorie Kelly of The Democracy Collaborative to explore the ways that impact investors both help and hinder systemic …
🎧 Impact Briefing. Host Brian Walsh chats with Amy Cortese to set the stage for the UN General Assembly and Climate Week NYC. …
David Bank catches up with Robert Munson, President of SOCAP and Managing director at the Sorenson Impact Center, who is putting together next …
Pro Mujer’s Carmen Correa joins host Monique Aiken to share how the pioneering Latin American microfinance institution’s bonds are democratizing gender lens investing …
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 …
Paris Prince of the Intentional Endowments Network joins host Monique Aiken to talk about how impact investors are responding to legal attacks on …
Quito, Ecuador, is more than 9,000 feet above sea level. But even higher than the city are Andean wetlands that filter, store and …
David Bank chats with Acre Africa’s Niza Banda in the next conversation from the recent “Connecting capital to communities” gathering at the Salzburg …
Drawing Africa’s pension funds deeper into impact investing is one of the goals of this week’s Africa Impact Summit in Cape Town, South …
David Bank chats with Empowa’s Glen Jordan in the next conversation from the recent “Connecting Capital to Communities” gathering at the Salzburg Global …
David Bank chats with FarMart’s Samridhi Singh in the next conversation in our series from the recent Salzburg Global Seminar on “Connecting Capital …
David Bank chats with FarMart’s Samridhi Singh in the next conversation in our series from the recent Salzburg Global Seminar on “Connecting Capital …
Note: This is an abridged version for ImpactAlpha. For all 10 tips, please visit this article on Medium.com. At the end of 2022, …
As world leaders gather in New York City this week for the UN General Assembly and New York Climate Week, investors and funders …
African countries have huge infrastructure needs, and governments need private investment to help meet them, particularly considering increasing climate impacts and green development …
Renewable energy generation and storage opportunities were a key focus at last week’s Africa Climate Summit in Nairobi, culminating in $26 billion in new …
Impact investing offers the promise of greater impact per dollar as funds are returned and recycled into new investments that generate new impact. …
This essay is adapted from Marjorie Kelly’s forthcoming book, “Wealth Supremacy: How the Extractive Economy and the Biased Rules of Capitalism Drive Today’s …
The European Union’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation, known as SFDR, is making waves in the investment industry. The legislative measure, introduced in 2019, …
The temperature was over 110 degrees Fahrenheit the day I met Roopa, a widowed mother of three, on her tiny plot of land …
An increasingly important question for impact investors is how to validate that their investments are having the intended impact on people or the …
Over the last few years, the main story around U.S. food waste funding has been that private capital has started to pay attention and invest …
Investors focused on societal impact are often concerned with corporate treatment of workers. To assess job quality performance across a portfolio, they generally …
There is untapped capacity and enthusiasm for catalytic capital by “high net wealth individuals” (HNIs) and family offices. TONIIC recently surveyed more than …
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 …
ImpactAlpha, May 5 – John Moore quit his corporate gig and moved to Philadelphia two decades ago. He found a city rich in …
ImpactAlpha, April 28 — A first generation Nigerian-American, Su Sanni grew up in East New York, Brooklyn and Jamaica, Queens. The low-income neighborhoods, …
ImpactAlpha, Apr. 21 – Attorney and academic Lourdes Germán recognized early the power of public finance. She has spent years working at firms including …
ImpactAlpha, Apr. 14 – “Net zero is not going to get us anywhere,” Ariane Mahler of Veridien Global Investors tells ImpactAlpha’s David Bank. “You …
ImpactAlpha, March 24 – Hundreds of companies and investors this week urged policymakers to protect their “freedom to invest responsibly,” marking a new …
The Dutch impact investor invested in Financiera Confianza in 2005 and saw the institution grow to 500,000 customers; 51% are women, 39% are youth, 23% are rural and 87% live below the poverty line, according to the company’s latest (2014) impact statistics (in Spanish).
Financiera Confianza says it has helped more than 40,000 small business owners obtain a first-time loan.
Oikocredit sold its stake to BBVA Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the Spanish bank, for an undisclosed sum.
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