The Week in impact investing: Buyers and builders

TGIF, Agents of Impact! 

• Roundup: Financing the supply of health, wealth and vibrant communities 
• Podcast: Making missing markets and putting catalytic capital into practice 
• PluggedIn: The lab-to-market pipeline for climate tech

🗣 The buy side. If you’re an asset owner or funder, it’s tempting to think of the entrepreneurs and nonprofits clamoring for funding as the “demand” side of the equation. At the “Making Missing Markets” gathering at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York this week, that script was flipped: Impact startups, social ventures, nonprofits and even schools represent the “supply” of outcomes and impact. Governments, foundations and investors, impact and otherwise, are the “buyers” of the value such builders produce, or “sell,” as David Bank and Roodgally Senatus explained in their preview. At the event, the Fed’s David Erickson credited Maggie Super Church, who helped launch the Healthy Neighborhood Equity Fund in Boston, for a key insight: “Why can I invest in a company that makes a pill that lowers blood pressure, but I can’t invest in a neighborhood that does, measurably, exactly the same thing? It’s the same outcome.” Money is plentiful and fungible; real-world impact is scarce and valuable. 

Employee ownership is another strategy for sharing wealth and improving livelihoods. “Market crafters” such as Ownership Capital Lab and Transform Finance are educating investors, mapping barriers and highlighting investable opportunities to create more employee-owners, as Alison Lingane and Julie Menter lay out in a guest post. “Buyers” such as Spring Point Partners, a family office in Philadelphia, are backing connectors such as Apis & Heritage, which finances employee ownership transitions, and advisors like Common Trust. Their goal is partly to spur a mindset shift among other investors. “We cannot simply financially engineer our way into more equitable and humane capital markets,” Spring Point’s Margot Kane shared in a guest post. We kicked off our series on addressing capital gaps, in collaboration with the Catalytic Capital Consortium, with Harvey Koh’s detailed examination of how Encourage Capital worked through barriers to lending to India’s tens of millions of small businesses to install solar panels, a massive opportunity that required an extensive toolkit to unlock. In the “blue economy,” blended finance is seeding and scaling ventures that build community resilience and protect oceans. “Conservation succeeds when local communities share in both ownership and benefit,” wrote AltaSea’s Terry Tamminen. “Every blue investment is also a community investment.”

Will global buyers demonstrate demand for better outcomes for the planet at COP30, the climate summit wrapping up today in Belém, Brazil? More than 80 countries have pressed for a formal roadmap for the “transition away from fossil fuels,” Erik Stein and I reported. Brazil has sought to duck the politically fraught issue. In Europe, pension funds are coming to terms with defense tech investment, as Russian drones buzz overhead, ImpactAlpha contributor Danielle Rossingh reported from the UK. Danielle also reported on how the UK’s new cabinet-level Office for the Impact Economy represents a strong “buy” for impact. The office will partner with the private sector to tackle poverty, affordability and other social challenges. 

In Africa, pension funds are increasingly becoming buyers of local job-creation and new retirement savers, through investments in fast-growing local firms, as Lucy Ngige reported. Patrick Ayota of Uganda’s National Social Security Fund wrote in a primer, “Knowing what we know about entrepreneurship and its potential to create employment, why have we not gone the extra mile to promote venture capital as a catalyst of growth in Africa?” Organizing the buyers serves to rationalize production as well, making missing markets for health, wealth and vibrant communities. – Amy Cortese

Also on ImpactAlpha this week:

• “Beyond Pledges: Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty provides a roadmap for climate investors,” by Erika Karp and Garvin Jabusch.
• “Doubling down on regenerative technologies is pragmatism,” by Vitanya Brain Performance’s Michael Southworth.
• “Why nonprofits need a Series B moment now,” by Lever for Change’s Cecilia A. Conrad and Kristen Molyneaux.
• “Deep dive: Harness the value of natural capital,” by CapShift’s Garima Gupta and Aishwarya Agarwal. 

Sponsored by Accelerating Impact

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• The International Climate Finance Accelerator supports fund managers with investment strategies contributing to climate change mitigation and/or climate change adaptation. Apply now. Please submit applications for the ICFA before Sunday, Nov. 30.
  
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Selected fund managers benefit from Accelerating Impact’s vibrant community of industry experts and fellow impact practitioners, expert coaching, tailored training, networking opportunities and enhanced visibility, in addition to access to working capital. Don’t miss your chance to join an inspiring cohort of like-minded professionals and to tap into these resources to accelerate the launch of your impact investment vehicle.

The Week’s Podcast

🎧 This Week in Impact. David Bank riffs on ImpactAlpha’s top stories with host Brian Walsh. Up this week: how Encourage Capital assembled the technical assistance necessary to unlock small business lending for solar power in India; making missing markets for local builders and buyers of health, wealth, and vibrant communities; and how European pension funds learned to start worrying and love defense.

• Listen to the new episode of This Week in Impact. Get the podcast in your feed by subscribing on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube.

The Week’s Call

Plugged In: LabStart’s Troy Daley on the lab-to-market pipeline for climate innovation. Billions of public dollars flow into climate-related research each year. Yet more than 30,000 patents from US universities and national labs sit untouched – never commercialized, never tested in the marketplace and never deployed where they’re needed most. “These patents are just sitting on the shelves,” said Troy Daley of LabStart in the latest Plugged In conversation with host Sherrell Dorsey. “We’re talking hundreds of millions of dollars being invested into all of these technologies but not really anything being done with them.”

• Commercialization bottleneck. LabStart starts not with patents, but with people. “Most programs take technology and then try to find a founder,” said Daley. “That’s a square peg into a round hole.” LabStart reverses the sequence. Founders spend months doing customer discovery before they ever touch the patent library. Only when the problem is validated do founders explore whether a national lab technology can solve it. The one-year program invests $100,000 per company, enabling participants to work full-time on their ventures. Easing the commercialization bottleneck is a generational investment opportunity. “The pipeline exists,” Daley said. “What’s missing is translation, talent support and capital with the right time horizon.”
  
• Keep reading, “Plugged In: LabStart’s Troy Daley on the lab-to-market pipeline for climate innovation,” by Sherrell Dorsey. Catch the replay.

The Week’s Dealflow, Talent and Jobs

💼 See and share more than a dozen new impact jobs posted this week on ImpactAlpha’s Career Hub and view hundreds of more jobs in impact investing and sustainable finance. Have a job listing to post? Submit it here. And catch up on all of this week’s dealflow coverage.

Ownership Works adds Aksia’s Michelle Davidson to its limited partners leadership council, a cohort of LPs committed to advancing employee ownership across their portfolios… SJF Ventures welcomes Cameron Mejia, previously with Mercury Fund, as an analyst in the firm’s Durham office… Energy Impact Partners taps Tori Barclay, formerly with KPMG, as a finance associate. 

Clean Energy Venture promotes Cheryl Hallett to chief financial officer… Bank of America is hiring a sustainable investing analyst… Beyond Finance has an opening vice president of social impact… GAWA Capital seeks a senior investment officer… Marriott International is on the hunt for a director of ESG and culture. 

Social Finance adds Gisele de Araújo, former financial analyst at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, as an impact investment associate… Stephanie Rupp, US SIF’s board chair and partner at Veris Wealth Partners, joins One World Investments’ advisory council… Kapor Center welcomes Chike Aguh, previously with Harvard’s Project on Workforce, as head of innovation and strategy.

Builders Vision welcomes Megan Murday, formerly with Dasseti, as vice president of impact measurement and management… Media Impact Funders is recruiting a director of development and member recruitment… Triodos Bank is looking for a nature-based solutions fund manager… Sequoia Climate Foundation seeks a climate finance program manager in London.

That’s a wrap. Have a wonderful weekend. 

– Nov. 21, 2025