Unlocking Endowments: Foundations Are Stepping Up Impact Investing

Today, impact investing is a $250 billion market, with foundations across the U.S. and globally increasingly looking to use their endowments to achieve social or environmental goals.

 

The 82-year-old Ford Foundation in New York City and the 32-year-old Sasakawa Peace Foundation in Tokyo are among those that are aiming to attract a higher number of private investors to the impact investing space. They are using de-risking strategies that help provide safety nets for investors, and tapping publicity-shy family offices in Japan, among other approaches.

 

In this podcast produced by Knowledge@Wharton, The Ford Foundation's Roy Swan and Christine Looney, and Mari Kogiso from the Sasakawa Peace Foundation discuss how foundations are leveraging their endowments to achieve their social or environmental goals. The podcast was also referenced in an article published in Nonprofit Quarterly, which makes the case for foundations to make impact investments from their endowments. In this column the author cites Mission Investors Exchange CEO Matt Onek, Heron Foundation President Dana Bezerra, and Ford Foundation’s Director of Mission Investments Roy Swan on the multiple ways foundations can commit to and ultimately invest more than a mandated five percent of a foundation's corpus toward mission.