It was a short editorial week because of President’s Day here in America. But short week shouldn’t equate with short memory: there’s no escaping the news, bad, good, or undetermined. Here at ImpactAlpha we focus on the good, the potentially good, and the long term thinking. Have you kept up? Test your ImpactIQ.
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1. What’s the problem with Mark Zuckerberg’s goal to make Facebook a tool for “The Global Community”?
- You can’t say you’re global if you’re not available in China
- It has been losing young users to Snap(chat)
- He’s still primarily solving Facebook’s problems, not the world’s
- You can’t force California values on people
2. What’s the aim of the new Axa World Funds Mix IN Perspectives Fund?
- To reap the dividends of companies committed to gender diversity at all levels
- To promote a balanced worldview in support of centrist governments
- To collect an ecstatic 22 percent IRR
- To make investment decisions using an artificial intelligence tool initially created for house music DJs.
3. What does McKinsey think would happen to the global economy if women participated equally?
- It would be less patriarchal
- It would collapse. Too many men in power would, like, totally freak out
- Sh*t would get done
- Global GDP would be boosted by 26 percent, or $28 trillion
4. To what did Citi Foundation commit $100 million?
- Hillary 2020
- Youth employment
- Youth unemployment
- Tricky, eh?
5. The World Bank suggests tapping into $1.9 trillion of Islamic finance assets to achieve the SDGs. What characterizes Islamic finance?
- Its $1.9 trillion of assets
- An investment focus on Muslim-majority countries
- The redistribution of oil profits to social enterprises and organic farmers.
- The just, fair, and equitable distribution of income and wealth, primarily through asset-based financing of tangible assets and communal risk-sharing
6. What do critics think of the for-profit edtech boom?
- It will collapse because liberal parents think children get too much screen time already
- Edtech targets already advantaged students and doesn’t do enough for low income communities
- It will get a boost from new US Education Secretary Betsy DeVos
- It’s too focused on English-language students and is missing out on global growth opportunities
7. What did a recent global study on life expectancy in 2030 conclude?
- Life expectancy is stabilizing around the world as resistance to antibiotics grows.
- Longer lives mean more suffering, anxiety and depression, driving up the sales of generic anxiolytics.
- Face it, we’re all going to die.
- We are nowhere near the limits on longevity and should be planning for more life, including in health, social services and pensions.
8. Impact investing veterans at Bridges Ventures are raising their fourth sustainable growth fund. What’s their investment strategy?
- Sustainable growth, duh
- UK health, education and energy companies
- Making Shoreditch great again. No reason it can’t work twice.
- Expansion from its current US and UK focus to emerging markets
9. What does LandMAPP, a startup based in the Netherlands and Ghana, do?
- It offers real-time satellite imagery to help countries meet forest-conservations goals
- It helps smallholder farmers get deeds to their land. Lack of deeds for many of the world’s 500 million farmers makes it hard for them to get loans and grow their businesses
- Sunset videos to personalize your Snap(chat).
- Not d, not this time, not ever again
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Answers:
1c, 2a, 3d, 4b (or c), 5d, 6b, 7d, 8b, 9b.