T100: Powered Ascent

Investors are going farther, faster and deeper into impact while meeting their targeted financial returns and ramping up efforts to measure their impact, according to a new Toniic report released May 24 at the Ford Foundation in New York.

 

T100: Powered Ascent is the second report in Toniic’s longitudinal study of portfolios in the 100% Impact Network. The report compiles data and perspectives from 76 private portfolios adding up to $2.8 billion in committed capital. That’s a nearly 50% increase in participation compared with the 2016 Launch report.

 

On average, the portfolios in Powered Ascent are 75% invested for impact, up 11% from the Launch report, and 41% are almost completely (90% or more) invested for impact. That’s good news for the double bottom line: 82% of T100 participants say their impact portfolios have met or exceeded their financial expectations.

 

“When the term impact investing was coined 10 years ago, it typically meant early-stage investments in social enterprises,” said Adam Bendell, CEO of Toniic. “This report reinforces that the state of the art in impact investing is a portfolio approach, in which investors seek positive impact in all asset classes across a portfolio. It also shows the increasing discernment of these investors in balancing impact and financial goals in different parts of their portfolios.” 

 

The portfolios studied are highly diversified across both asset classes and the spectrum of returns. “Being able to bring in the creative tool kit of a spectrum of capital with different impact and financial return expectations is going to bust things wide open,” said Dr. Ruth Shaber, founder and president of the Tara Health Foundation, one of the investor case studies in the report.

 

Impact measurement is the next challenge these investors are addressing: 60% of T100 participants are measuring in some form today, and 98% want to be measuring by 2020. In addition, the Powered Ascent report is the first to map impact investment themes to the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which helps impact investors align with global sustainability goals and allows comparisons across the impact investment ecosystem.

 

The maturing 100% impact movement is becoming the new standard for impact investing, and Toniic believes the report’s evidence that 100% impact portfolios are feasible for a wide range of investors will accelerate the momentum.