The Week in impact investing: Moving money

TGIF, Agents of Impact! 

• Roundup: Circular flow
• Event: Spotted at Total Impact Summit
• Podcasts: Alderpoint Capital’s Chris Larson and Mizuho’s Megumi Muto
• Spotlight: Undersea desalination in the Maldives

🗣 Circular flow. A basic diagram of the economy might show the continuous flow of money, and value, between workers and businesses. IRL, financial interactions are infinitely more varied, giving Agents of Impact multiple levers to pull to move capital to where it can do the most good. In Los Angeles, an upcoming social bond will use revenues from a half-cent sales tax, approved by voters, to provide a guarantee for commercial investors, in order to raise low-cost capital, to be lent to nonprofit developers of affordable housing, with the hope of helping developers complete their projects more quickly and cheaply. “This is true catalytic capital that’s trying to change policy and induce the private sector to come in and do this at scale,” Ryan Johnson of the LA County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency told me. In Africa, Sango Capital is stepping up its purchase of secondary stakes in private equity funds to help recycle capital for new investments, as Lucy Ngige reported. Bjoern Struewer and Natasha Dinham diagrammed Roots of Impact’s schema for “impact by design,” tracing the flow from fit-for-purpose capital to aligned incentives to deliver on high-potential opportunities.

Sometimes the flow of capital requires a push, or a pull. Candide Group’s Morgan Simon called out some of the biggest sponsors of donor-advised funds for contravening donors who advised them that they want to continue to support the Southern Poverty Law Center despite – or because of – an indictment by the Trump administration’s Department of Justice. Dorianna Blitt and ari rosenberg of the Jewish Investors Network called on PayPal to process payments for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank (PayPal shareholders will vote on a resolution on the issue next week). With the demise of the Align Impact, some of the firm’s financial advisors, along with their clients, are decamping to Sorenson Impact Advisory to help prove that 100% mission-aligned institutional portfolios can outperform traditional benchmarks, as Jim Sorenson and Lauren Sercu told me. Roodgally Senatus reported on SustainVC’s decision to keep its third fund small to be able to continue to back early stage ventures. Lucy rounded up the African startups building AI for Africa as “a bottom-up, distributed, local alternative that could be a model not only for the Global South, but for the globe.” – David Bank

The Week’s Event

Total Impact Summit, Philadelphia. Investors from across the US came to the birthplace of the Declaration of Independence to reclaim the narrative of American capitalism. Their goal: Reshape how capital and innovation flow to drive economic prosperity and power for overlooked people and underserved communities. From financial markets to housing to ownership structures, modern-day systems “were designed from a set of underlying beliefs about who matters, who participates, who owns, and who benefits,” ImpactPHL’s Kafi Lindsay said to kick off the two-day gathering. “Our task is not simply to make extractive structures slightly more efficient or slightly fairer, but to design regenerative and reparative architecture rooted in the philosophy that democracy and economic participation belong to all of us.” 

• We’ll recap highlights from the Total Impact Summit in Monday’s Brief.

The Week’s Podcasts

🎧 This Week in Impact. Host Brian Walsh takes up ImpactAlpha’s top stories with editor David Bank. Up this week: How Los Angeles is working to lower the cost and complexity of capital for affordable housing; the Southern Poverty Law Center controversy, and who really controls the funds in donor-advised funds; and, how sustainable is sustainable aviation fuel?

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

Agents of Impact: Alder Point Capital’s Chris Larson on switching from LP to GP to operate sustainable real assets. Chris Larson spent years fielding pitches at a San Francisco family office. Now he’s the one doing the pitching – and the doing. As co-founder of Alder Point Capital Management, Larson is stitching together neglected timber parcels and regenerative farms into working landscapes that restore watersheds, improve soil health and deliver returns. The firm has reached a second close of $126 million, with growing interest from allocators in Europe and Asia drawn to large-scale sustainable real assets. Larson talks with David Bank about the LP-to-GP leap, pricing for physical climate risk and whether forests and farmland really can be “future proofed.”  

• Listen in and read more.

👩‍🏫 Women Changing Finance: Integrating impact into one of Japan’s largest banks. What if financiers started thinking like finance ministers? Mizuho Financial Group’s Megumi Muto joins host Krisztina Tora to explain how Mizuho is using its assets to make the energy, steel, chemicals and automotive industries more sustainable. Megumi spent decades in development finance, including at the Japan International Cooperation Agency, or JICA.

• Check it out.

The Week’s Spotlight

Water.org’s WaterConnect sets the stage for a first-of-a-kind desalination plant in Asia. Capital for first-of-a-kind, or FOAK, deployments of climate technologies is among the hardest financing to raise. It’s even harder in small, emerging markets (see, “Flexible financing to bridge a ‘missing middle’ for commercial climate solutions”). To help ready a subsea desalination facility in the Maldives for such financing, Water.org is investing an undisclosed amount of capital for a feasibility study to “establish the project’s technical and commercial structure” for the Malé Water and Sewerage Company, the local utility that is signing on as the project’s offtaker. The US-based nonprofit’s WaterConnect, which invests in water and sanitation infrastructure in emerging markets, is working with Norway-based desalination tech company Flocean to scope out a plant to deliver freshwater to Malé and Hulhumalé, two of the islands in the Indian Ocean archipelago.

• Viable solution. Water infrastructure in WaterConnect’s target markets “can’t be done purely with public or commercial capital. It will inevitably require blended finance,” WaterConnect’s John Moyer told ImpactAlpha. The goal of the feasibility study and partnership with MWSC is to derisk Flocean’s plans so investors can come in on a fully “investment-ready project.” Desalination is typically a “last resort” for producing fresh water because of the cost and complexity. Flocean develops undersea desalination facilities for islands and coastal regions. Its technology uses natural water pressure as its main energy source, rather than diesel or other fossil-fuel based energy sources. “Subsea technology is emerging as a viable solution for utility-scale water supply,” said Moyer. “There’s real innovation happening in how water is produced or wastewater is treated.”

• Keep reading, and catch up on all of this week’s dealflow reporting.

The Week’s 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.

Suzanne Ashman, previously with Latitude, joined Sovereign AI Fund as managing partner… Sea Forward Fund welcomed Shey Dorji, previously with Bhutan for Life, as ocean impact metrics and reporting intern… ROC USA tapped Danielle Bundrock, formerly with NeighborWorks Montana, as network director to its board… The Council of Institutional Investors appointed Sara Murphy, director of systems-level investing at Sierra Club Foundation, to its advisory council for US asset owners.

Elizabeth McGeveran will step down as McKnight Foundation’s vice president of investments next month after 12 years with the Minneapolis-based foundation… Julia Hines, previously with Education Resource Strategies, joined Social Finance as executive assistant to the president and COO… The ImPact tapped Jasmine Rashid, former impact director at Candide Group, as community lead for the US and Canada… ReFED’s Alexandria Coari joined climate investment fund EcoShift Collective as executive director.

That’s a wrap. Have a wonderful weekend. 

– May 15, 2026