The Week in Impact Investing: Looking ahead to 2026

TGIF, Agents of Impact! 

• Roundup: Year of the Fire Horse
• Podcast: Why LP = Leadership Potential
• The Call: Lowering the cost of capital for smaller cities
• Impact Voices: Taking the pulse of the creative economy

🗣Year of the Fire Horse. If the annus horribilis now coming to a close has you down, consider skipping ahead a few holidays to the Year of the Fire Horse that starts in mid-February. According to the Chinese zodiac, the confluence, which occurs every 60 years, augurs a dynamic period of passion, courage, innovation and significant, perhaps disruptive, change. Agents of Impact are ready, as evidenced by our series of lookaheads to 2026 and roundups on the major themes in ImpactAlpha’s coverage. “What a great recap of uplifting efforts and hopeful conversations as we cap off an otherwise pretty traumatizing and dark year,” Calvert Impact’s Catherine Godschalk wrote in a note this week.  

If affordability was the watchword (and hot potato) of 2025, “shared prosperity” looks to top next year’s political and investment agendas. Predistribution, instead of (or in addition to) redistribution, can expand ownership and wealth-building opportunities in order to fairly share the prosperity that comes with innovation and economic growth. With the AI disruption hard upon us, there’s no time to lose, as Roodgally Senatus and I wrote this week. As he has all year, Roody also introduced some of the new employee ownership funds that are seeking to give private equity investors a run for their money as baby boomer businesses change hands. Even as USAID was being decimated and foreign aid budgets cut, practitioners in Africa and elsewhere were charting local ‘pathways to growth,’ fueled by domestic pension funds and other private investors, as ImpactAlpha’s Lucy Ngige and Jessica Pothering chronicled throughout the year. 

Amid the cleantech carnage, climate investors found reasons for optimism (and buying opportunities) in the surprisingly durable momentum of the clean energy transition, according to Amy Cortese, who has continued to put her unique stamp on our climate coverage. With Erik Stein, Amy also recapped the first year of our weekly newsletter, LP/GP, which chronicled capital allocators’ and managers’ creative responses to the tough fundraising environment and dearth of exits, including secondary and continuation funds, GP stakes, co-investments, holdcos and more. ImpactAlpha readers know that we’ve been on the lookout all year for evidence that LP can also stand for “leadership potential.” Countering the backsliding, we’ve seen growing communities of practice around system-level, impact-first, place-based, climate-smart and catalytic investing. In the coming year, Spring Point Partners’ Margot Kane asks fellow LPs “to intentionally seek out risk and uncertainty in pursuit of positive impact and actionable learnings, instead of passively accepting what the broader markets determine for us.” At ImpactAlpha, we’ll be seeking that out as well, in the Year of the Fire Horse and beyond. – David Bank

The Week’s Podcast

🎧 This Week in Impact. Host Brian Walsh takes up ImpactAlpha’s top stories with editor David Bank. Up this week: Takeaways from ImpactAlpha’s lookaheads to 2026, including how LPs and GPs are responding to the dearth of exits and fundraising challenges; ownership strategies to share the pie even before it grows; and how African asset owners and fund managers are going local to create their own pathways to growth.

• 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

Guarantees for muni bonds to lower the cost of capital for smaller cities (video). Municipal bonds issuance hit record levels this year, but many smaller cities and rural areas remain boxed out of the market due to perceived risk and lack of top-tier credit ratings. Michael Gaughan of the Vermont Bond Bank, Lourdes Germán of the Public Finance Initiative, Damon Burns of Munivestor, Eric Glass of Clarion Call Capital and Brian Boland of Delta Fund joined ImpactAlpha’s David Bank on Agents of Impact Call No. 76 to discuss how credit enhancement tools can expand access to efficient capital.

• Philanthropic guarantees. The Public Finance Initiative is testing whether foundations with AAA credit ratings can open doors for municipalities that traditional markets have shut out. The initiative is working with a half-dozen state and county level, rural serving organizations to test the approach. “The theory of change of this program is, can a guarantee be a meaningful tool when it comes from a philanthropy that believes in your mission, that believes in healthy communities, and that also can provide a credit enhancement that is currently not available on the open market,” Germán said. “It could bring your credit rating to a AAA at a moment when, if you look under the hood, you are facing significant fiscal weaknesses” (for background see, “Can philanthropic bond guarantees expand access to capital for smaller cities and rural areas?”).
  
• Shared risk. Bond banks pool borrowers to help smaller issuers access the municipal bond market. The Vermont Bond Bank has nearly $700 million in outstanding bonds across public infrastructure projects including roads, schools, water systems, community facilities, and energy projects. A median size community in Vermont is 1,800 people and about one and a half full time employees, “but they have needs that are the same as other larger cities across the country,” Gaughan said in explaining Vermont’s state-chartered organization. “A bond bank is, in my view, the most effective way to level the playing field and provide equitable access to capital.”
  
• Climate resilience. Lower borrowing costs can directly improve residents’ quality of life, noted Damon Burns of Finance New Orleans.  “We have an old housing stock. We have a lot of historic homes. They’re beautiful, but they cost a lot of money to operate,” he said. The city is deploying community solar projects and microgrids financed through bonds, tax abatements and renewable energy tax credits. “All of those are going toward helping to lower costs for families, so that it can improve their quality of life,” Burns said. “So it’s really critical that we get the best cost of money from the municipal bond market, and that’s where those guarantees can come in.”

• Market response. Clarion Call Capital’s Eric Glass sees investor interest in fixed-income vehicles “that deliver real value, without extraction or exploitation” as a catalyst for market transformation. “If investors are really interested — whether foundations, high net worth individuals, family offices or multi-family offices — the market is going to respond,” Glass said. Delta Fund, the family office of Katie and Brian Boland, is among the investors backing Clarion Call’s strategy.  Boland challenged allocators to examine their bond strategies. “How many of the investors and foundations on this call have had board level meetings about their bond strategy?” he asked. “You’d see a massive shift.”
• Keep reading, “The Call: Guarantees for muni bonds to lower the cost of capital for smaller cities,” and watch the video replay. 

Impact Voices: Creative Economy

Taking the pulse on the global creative economy. The contraction of public funding for the arts is fueling financial creativity to keep creatives afloat. On the conference circuit this fall, Upstart Co-Lab’s Laura Callanan found funds “offering loans to arts nonprofits to reduce costs and launch new revenue-generating schemes.” Long-time creative economy lenders in the US might “prefer equity investments in businesses in creative industries to achieve double-digit returns.” Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, is ramping up its support for creatives. Its sovereign Cultural Development Fund and Cultural Assets Group is looking to deploy $40 billion by 2030. Funding channels include a $234 film fund, a $227 million visual arts fund, and an $80 million fashion fund.

• Check out Callanan’s dispatches for ImpactAlpha from creative economy events and sessions in Riyadh, Berlin, Vienna and New York.

The Week’s Deals, 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 check out all of ImpactAlpha’s dealflow reporting this week.

Community Reinvestment Fund welcomed Chris Uhl, previously with IFF, as executive vice president of programs and partnerships… Ownership Works added Mary Van de Graaf as a senior director… US SIF’s Stephanie Ruppp joined the Women’s Foundation of Colorado’s investment committee… Tailwater Capital promoted Doug Prieto and Drew Winston to partner… Emily Bertsche became managing director of private markets at the Kresge Foundation… Vision Ridge Partners welcomed Jeff Bishop, former CEO of Key Capture Energy, as an operating partner. 

Ford Foundation’s Sarita Gupta and Ellie Bertani, CEO of GitLab Foundation, have been appointed co-chairs of the Families and Workers Fund… Ballmer Group added Shelby Clayton as an executive assistant on its national impact team… Asset Funders Network welcomed Katy McLeod Leopard as a part-time Memphis program officer… Charlotte Cipolletti Power was promoted to vice president of AI and impact at Vista Equity Partners… Samuel Efosa-Austin, previously with INCO, joined Impact Investors Foundation as head of partnerships and fundraising. 

David Maina joined Small Foundation from AlphaMundi Group, as investment director… Kara Murray, previously with the city of Boston’s Mayor’s Office of Housing, joined Social Finance as an impact advisory associate… Aunnie Patton Power is launching the Innovative Finance Initiative Academy, offering courses developed with partners Roots of Impact and Village Capital for impact practitioners.

That’s a wrap. Have a wonderful weekend. 

– Dec. 19, 2025