The Brief

The Week in impact investing: Workarounds

ImpactAlpha · April 25, 2025

TGIF, Agents of Impact!

In today’s Brief:

  • Roundup: Supply chain and demand
  • Podcasts: This Week in Impact, Activest, Criterion and Community Capital Live
  • Agent of Impact: George Cook, Honeycomb Credit

🗣 Supply chain and demand. The White House’s chaotic trade policies recall what the Buddha may have said about grabbing a hot coal to throw at someone else in anger: “You are the one who gets burned.” Unlimited Funds’ Bob Elliott reports that, already, bookings for shipping containers have collapsed, port activity is down, and trucking volume is slowing. Retailers expect empty store shelves within a few weeks. Investment strategist David Woo predicts crippling material shortages by summer. “Americans have not begun to feel even one iota of the tariffs,” he said on the Odd Lots podcast. Even tariffs (as high as 3,500%) on solar panels from Southeast Asia (made from Chinese components) are not likely to recreate a US photovoltaics industry, but it will drive manufacturing to other countries and raise costs even for domestic manufacturers that rely on imported equipment and cells. By the same token, offshore wind suppliers, now under assault in the US, may turn instead to the UK, which is proposing to boost jobs, build manufacturing, and attract private investment with a £300 million ($400 million) offshore wind initiative.

Constraints drive innovation. Demand, especially for electricity, is soaring. Though nearly all new generating capacity is coming from renewable sources, greenhouse gas emissions are not appreciably falling. That is creating a market for ways to both reduce carbon and to capture and store it. We featured Boomitra in our San Francisco Climate Week roundup; the California company this week issued its first “soil organic carbon” removal credits, sourced from smallholder farmers in India. Mati Carbon, which likewise aims to put money in the pockets of farmers, won this week’s $50 million X Prize for carbon removal with its enhanced rock weathering techniques. A ton of carbon is a ton of carbon, wherever it is. Last week, we highlighted catalytic investors who are looking to India’s huge market to find meaningful climate solutions; this week, contributor Shefali Anand reported on India’s investment and innovation in nuclear power.

Investors are finding workarounds as well to support emerging fund managers with fresh investment theses that promise impact alpha – just don’t call them diverse or underrepresented. In a tough political and fundraising environment, private equity giant TPG – which now refers to “next generation managers” – made an investment from its TPG NEXT strategy in Virginie Morgon’s Ardabelle Capital to help European companies build supply chains for the sustainable transition. In a guest post, SJF Ventures’ Dan Geballe and Elizabeth Roberts asked, “Can cybersecurity startups be a vehicle for social progress?” and pointed to the opportunity to help small businesses, school districts and other overlooked customers protect their users and their assets. Roodgally Senatus reported on how the knotty problem of housing for young people exiting foster care can be tackled with innovative financing. Jessica Pothering detailed efforts by other investors to hammer out scalable and replicable models to realize the potential of blended finance to meet development goals. And BlueMark’s Paige Nicol called for easier ways to assess fund managers’ impact track records, to help asset allocators more effectively meet their strategic goals. 

Volatile times demand creative workarounds. Agents of Impact are supplying them. – David Bank

Next Week’s Call

Promising plays for shared prosperity. Lafayette Square’s Damien Dwin is looking forward to a time when lenders compete to get capital to businesses that employ working-class people in working-class places. The firm offers business borrowers “workforce solutions” to help their low- and moderate-income workers save for retirement, access health benefits, reduce financial insecurity, and increase economic mobility; it lowers its interest rate for companies that deploy the strategies. Dwin will join other Agents of Impact to showcase shared-prosperity strategies and construct an innovative agenda for moving forward – together. Join Agents of Impact Call No. 70, Wednesday, April 30, at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm London. RSVP today.

The Week’s Podcasts

🎧 This Week in Impact: Climate tech is weathering political turbulence. Host Brian Walsh takes up ImpactAlpha’s top stories with editor David Bank. Up this week: How climate tech founders and funders are planning to ride out the political storm. What lackluster fundraising for TPG NEXT means for emerging and diverse managers. Plus, promising pages in the playbook for shared prosperity.

🗺️The Activest Podcast: The origins of Next World Assets, Part 1. Activest was created in response to police killings and the extractive nature of fines and fees in places like Ferguson, Mo. The Activest spinoff, Next World Assets, was created to answer the question: What if the powers-that-be instead used huge municipal investments to make people’s lives better and easier. Listen now.

🏘️ Community Capital Live: Creating democratic financial infrastructure for local communities. Seed Commons’ Ed Whitfield joins the podcast to share the financial cooperative’s lending process, governance structure and challenges faces in the current political climate. Check it out.

📯The Criterion Institute Podcast: Reimagining resourcing for social transformation, Part 1 . MADRE’s Yifat Susskind joins Joy Anderson to discuss the importance of a “feminist financial imagination” in the context of social transformation and funding for women’s rights organizations. Tune in.

The Week’s Agent of Impact

George Cook, Honeycomb Credit: Bridging the gap for small business lending. Growing up in rural Pennsylvania, George Cook worked for the family business: a community bank that has been in the family for six generations. In the bank’s branches, Cook did “every job imaginable.” He fell in love with commercial lending, “meeting the entrepreneurs, hearing their stories, and connecting them to the resources they need to take that next step on their journey.” The experience provided Cook a front row seat to the consolidation in banking that has whittled the nation’s community banks from 30,000 to just 4,000 today, and eroded the local lending relationships that once supported local businesses. “Underwriting decisions moved from across the street to across the country,” he says. 

In 2018, Cook launched Honeycomb Credit, an investment crowdfunding site that enables small businesses to tap retail investors – often their customers, neighbors and followers – for fairly priced loans. “I saw an opportunity in the market to reach younger and smaller businesses that are being left behind and to help them on their path to bankability,” he says.  The Pittsburgh-based lending platform has helped hundreds of local bakeries, brewpubs, mom and pops, and other kinds of businesses that anchor local economies, raise close to $50 million for equipment purchases, working capital and expansion. “It takes a lot to run a business, and having community support while you build makes the difference,” says Cook. 

Honeycomb itself is doing some building. In December, it absorbed Raise Green, a crowdlending site for eco-focused companies and projects. Earlier this month, it acquired IFundWomen, or IFW, a crowdfunding site led by Karen Cahn, that provides coaching, capital, corporate grants, and Small Business Administration loans to female entrepreneurs. IFW has helped women-led businesses raise nearly $200 million in grants and loans since 2016. Honeycomb has itself opted for more traditional fundraising avenues to fuel its growth. Last June, it scored a $6 million “seed+” funding round co-led by SustainVC, Mudita Venture Partners, and the American Family Insurance Institute for Corporate and Social Impact. This month, Upstart Co-Lab invested $750,000 in the company. Economic uncertainty is likely to hit small businesses the hardest, Cook says. “Flexible, community-driven funding like Honeycomb’s is more important than ever.”

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 check out all of this week’s dealflow reporting.

At Apollo Global, Jay Clayton, former SEC chief in the first Trump administration, will step down from his role as chair and lead independent director to become interim US Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Gary Cohn, former Goldman Sachs chief operating officer and chief economic advisor to Trump, will join the board as lead independent director. Apollo CEO Marc Rowan will take on the additional role of chair of the board. 

IMPACT Community Capital promoted Andrew Zimmerman to managing director of investments… Gema Sancho-Minana Bertomeu, a former environmental policy consultant with the Asian Development Bank, joined GAWA Capital as an impact and technical assistance analyst… NESsT appointed Chad Sachs as CEO, replacing Kristen Dueck, who is stepping down. Sachs will be the social enterprise investor’s third CEO since co-founder Nicole Etchart stepped down in November 2023. 

Allivate Impact Capital welcomed Duke University’s Suman Murthy as an MBA impact investing associate… Lendable promoted Noemie Rosala Rivera to director of capital solutions… TPG Rise Climate tapped Juan Diego Vargas from EQT Infrastructure as partner… Rebalance Capital added Salesforce’s Paula Goldman as an advisory board member… Congruent Ventures welcomed Gray Robinson as a partner… Techstars alumni Daniel Smith and Mita Carriman launched the Caribbean Venture Collective to support startup founders with ties to the Caribbean. 

That’s a wrap. Have a wonderful weekend. 

– April 25, 2025