Values-aligned investing, mission investing, and PRIs

How Does the Divesting Strategy Work Within Mission Investing, and How Do We Evaluate Its Success?

Posted on October 9, 2014 by Melanie Audette

DivestInvest  is a national movement that has signatories looking at divestment of fossil fuels from their portfolio. There are 64 foundations signed on at the DivestInvest.org website and there are resources about divestment strategies there, as well. At the same time, it’s just as important, if not more so, to look at opportunities to invest in alternative strategies for energy… Read More

How do you measure impact or potential impact when deciding how to be most effective?

Posted on October 9, 2014 by Melanie Audette, Tomer Inbar, Tony Wells

How do you measure impact or potential impact when deciding how to be most effective, particularly when comparing the strategy of maximizing investment returns to having more money for grants versus impact investing? Melanie Audette:This starts with where you are in the process. You should think about your mission and how you are evaluating your grants, and take the same… Read More

What Are Recoverable Grants?

Posted on October 9, 2014 by Tony Wells

Recoverable grants may be used to address concerns of non-profit boards that are hesitant to take on any type of debt. Some boards may have a policy that they’re not willing to take on debt, no matter what the upside is. We’ve had several situations where we became creative with our approach. We would say, “Okay, we really believe in… Read More

How Can I Help My Board Members Understand the Long- Term Nature of Impact Investing?

Posted on October 9, 2014 by Tomer Inbar, Tony Wells

Tomer Inbar: To start with a short anecdote, a client of mine and I were talking about their first program-related investment (PRI) that was going to go under. Although they had a successful program-related investment portfolio, she had to go to the investment committee where her PRIs were managed and tell them that they believed that this company was going… Read More

Impact Investing: An Introduction

Posted on May 24, 2014 by Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors

For many years philanthropy and investing have been thought of as separate disciplines — one championing social change, the other financial gain. The idea that the two approaches could be integrated in the same deals — in essence, delivering a financial return while doing good — struck most philanthropists and most investors as far-fetched… Read More

Impact Investing 2.0: The Way Forward

Posted on November 8, 2013 by Ben Thornley, Brenna Mccallick, Cathy Clark, Christopher Cox, Colby Dailey, Daniel Brett, Jed Emerson

But for every pioneer blazing a path forward in impact investing, there are many others waiting at the sidelines.They have indicated they need more robust data about the field’s track record. Equally if not more important, they are waiting for a clear vision of what success looks like. What reasonable combinations of social and financial returns can be expected in diverse segments of the industry?… Read More