January 2021 | Field News & Resources
This page features this month's highlights, announcements, resources, and general news related to advancements in the impact investing field.
- Mission Investors Exchange is pleased to announce two new officers on its Board of Directors and to welcome three new board members.
- Adasina Social Capital calls for an overhaul of the systemically-unjust, standard due diligence process to one that centers the asset manager evaluation process in real impact and diversity outcomes and allow allocators to embrace new evaluation processes that actively dismantle systemic barriers for Black asset managers.
- Social Finance has launched a $5.8M investment with Portland, Oregon software development school Alchemy Code Lab to launch a Career Impact Bond aimed at creating pathways to economic mobility in the tech industry, particularly for women and LGBTQ individuals, and placing them in in-demand jobs.
- The Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) recently published insights into the financial performance of impact investors, uncovering the growing maturation within the industry as investors become more sophisticated in their approaches to performance management and capital allocation.
- Larry Kramer, president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, addresses potential drawbacks to increasing endowment payout during times of economic downturns in the keystone esssay of a Stanford Social Innovation Review series on foundation payouts in times of crises. View the full series, featuring essays from foundation leaders including Darren Walker of Ford Foundation and John Palfrey of the MacArthur Foundation.
- Listen to Fran Seegull, executive director of U.S. Impact Investing Alliance, on Barron’s Live, where she discusses the Alliance’s recent policy proposals that reimagine our current systems for a more equitable recovery from the many challenges that came to the forefront of our society in 2020.
- This article outlines how some smaller foundations are making efforts to slow climate change by focusing their investments on specific issues in local ecosystems that have the potential to create a larger impact.
- The Biden administration is taking steps to possibly reverse the decision by Donald Trump’s U.S. Department of Labor to make it more difficult for fiduciaries of retirement plans to direct money to ESG-focused funds.
- The Cleveland Foundation reports on three steps they have taken to promote racial equity through financial structures and operations including the launch of a Racial Equity Investment Pool, establishing a Police Brutality Bond exclusion and adopting an official Anti-Hate Group policy regarding grants from donor-advised funds.
- In this policy memo, Social Finance proposes outcomes-based funding as a powerful tool to help the Biden-Harris administration leverage limited resources to achieve profound social change.
- Diane Isenberg, founder of Ceniarth, details Ceniarth’s journey building and integrating a gender-lens investment strategy and shares lessons learned for new funders entering the space.
- The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s director of the Family-Centered Community Change initiative, Amoretta Morris, details how they are improving family well-being and addressing equity issues exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic through flexible grantmaking and strategic co-investing.
- Calvert Impact Capital President and CEO, Jennifer Pryce, shares how she’s thinking about nature-based investments. Leveraging public, private, and NGO partnerships Jennifer calls for fellow investors to reimagine how they are structuring deals to help accelerate and scale investments that protect our planet.
- More than a dozen top asset owners sign a commitment to allocate more capital to BIPOC managers, including Nathan Cummings Foundation, Nia Impact Capital, among others. This commitment calls for asset owners to change their due diligence processes and help rebalance a system in which white, male asset managers control 98.7% of the investment industry’s $69 trillion in assets under management.