Wednesday, June 10, 2026

Blooming Founders on “Integrated Investing” in London

By
Gino Baltazar, MS Finance
-
Blooming Founders Welcomes Integrated Investing in London

Lu Li, founder of Blooming Founders, a community of female founders, freelancers in London, Bonnie Foley-Wong, author of a new book on Integrated Investing and Servane Mouazan is the founder of Ogunte, talk about their work, and thoughtful approaches with questions about what impact investing truly is, expected outcomes and how best to choose impact investing opportunities.

***

“Lu asked me [Bonnie Foley-Wong] what was the impetus for writing the book. I had already been developing resources and tools to make better investment decisions. When I started in impact investing, I found that many people were just transferring investment approaches from the conventional, but broken way of thinking about business and investing.

I learned that everything from why we invest to the mindsets that affect our decisions had to shift.

Practically speaking, I needed to develop new ways to evaluate businesses, the impact outcomes they could achieve, and communicate why we should invest in them. As my thinking progressed, I was approached with questions about what is impact and how to choose impact investment opportunities. I always felt these questions couldn’t be answered in 2 or 3 minutes and that people inquiring weren’t getting the whole picture. So I wrote it all down – as a resource, compass, and guide for new and experienced impact investors looking for better ways to make investment decisions.

Another question from Lu which I found interesting was whether people dismissed impact investing or didn’t take it as seriously. I shared a story of how I’m at the intersection of a number of communities including the impact community and more traditional angel investors and venture capitalists. I talk about the impact I’m having as an investor and angel fund manager, that it’s not just the impact of the ventures we invest in, but also how we invest and who invests with us.

Pique Fund applies Integrated Investing in its evaluation of ventures and its decision-making and it was created to be more inclusive to a diverse community of investors. Pique Fund now has 29 investors, 24 of which are women, representing 80% of the fund’s capital. The mix of accredited investors and non-accredited investors is about 50:50.

I also talk about where Pique Fund is on the spectrum of impact and how our portfolio companies have an impact in various parts of their business model. It could be directly through their value proposition, with direct positive impact on their customers, or it could be elsewhere in their business model, such as having a more ethical supply chain or more inclusive hiring practices than their non-impact oriented counterparts and competitors.

When I communicate this information to other investors, who might not consider themselves impact investors or might be a bit skeptical about impact investing, I see them embracing the idea of impact investing. I can see them start to think about the impact they could have or maybe even the impact already in their portfolio. The point is impact is starting to permeate the mainstream. I hope one day impact becomes a natural, obvious consideration when evaluating investment opportunities, choosing what businesses grow, and supporting those to flourish.”

Surdna Commits $100 Million to Impact Investing

By
Gino Baltazar, MS Finance
-
John Andrus, Founder of Surdna

Surdna, one of the oldest operating foundations in the US and among who funnels impacting investments to CDFI’s, and PRI’s recently announced it will contribute $100 million share of its endowment to impact investing to advance its social justice mission.

$100M for 100

One-hundred years ago in 1917, businessman John Andrus decided to donate half of his Pepto-Bismol fortune, naming his new foundation after himself — except he reversed the spelling of his last name.

“I think the important starting point is to understand that we drive the money that we have to spend for grants by investing a lot of capital,” Mr Andrus once said. “You should try to find ways to marry the goals that you have with your grantmaking with the goals that you have with your investing.”

***

“As one of the oldest and largest family-governed foundations in the U.S., Surdna is not just investing to further its mission, but also to build up the field of impact investing. In 2014 when the Foundation made the decision to allocate the $100 million, there was not a wide breadth of funds and tools available.

As part of its investment, Surdna seeks to share its experience with others thinking about impact investing through its “Mapping the Journey to Impact Investing” publication and to support funds like the Business Outreach Center (BOC) Network, which helps build up women and minority-owned contracting businesses. Surdna’s 2014 investment in BOC leveraged an additional $2.8 million in capital from Goldman Sachs’s 10,000 Small Businesses program.

The “Mapping the Journey to Impact Investing,” report charts the journey from the time the Board of Directors and staff began exploring impact investing in 2014 to the decision-making process and experience of implementing impact investing policies.

“The Surdna Foundation’s founder, John E. Andrus was committed to inclusion, social justice and sustainability,” said Peter Benedict II, Surdna Foundation’s Board Chair.

“By sharing our experience and some of the lessons we learned in this report this centennial year, we will contribute to collective learning in the fields of mission-related investing and family philanthropy and celebrate these core values.”

A few examples of recent impact investments the Surdna Foundation has made to explore impact investing include the following.

  • A $5 million commitment in DBL Partners III, a venture capital fund in Silicon Valley, which invests in companies that deliver strong financial returns while promoting social, environmental, and economic improvements in the regions in which they operate.
  • A four-year, $700,000 loan to the Business Outreach Center (BOC) Network, a small business development organization and CDFI in New York City. The investment began in 2014 and allows BOC to provide loans to minority and women owned contractors working on public and private sector construction contracts.

Surdna will continue with impact investing to reach the full commitment of $100 million through 2017 and into the future.”

NBA All-Star Chris Paul Joins Turner Impact Capital

By
Gino Baltazar, MS Finance
-

NBA All-Star Chris Paul Joins Turner Impact Capital as Firm Announces Successful Closing of Multifamily Impact Fund That Will Spur $1 Billion in Workforce Housing Acquisitions in U.S.NBA Clippers point guard and star player Chris Paul is joining Turner Impact Capital as an ambassador and investor to help bring attention and solve finding quality affordable housing in working class communities across the US.

The impact investing vehicle, Turner Multifamily Impact Fund, which recently closed at $1 billion and also includes celebrities Eva Longoria and Andre Agassi as partners, currently spans nine multifamily properties that it owns and manages. The fund focuses on areas such as Dallas, Austin, Las Vegas, Miami and Washington D.C.

Turner Impact’s principal and CEO, Bobby Turner, is a Wharton Penn grad.  He tells Wharton students, in a speaker series he also organizes for his alma mater, as he does in the video: “You should not define success by making financial change working at an investment bank. Rather, you should define it by the amount of meaningful change you make in the world.”

“The growing disparity between workers’ income and their rent is untenable, and comes at the expense of health care security, food security and retirement security,” said Bobby Turner, CEO of Turner Impact Capital. “Our housing fund addresses these daunting challenges by preserving the workforce housing status of the properties it acquires and implementing targeted physical upgrades and property management improvements that enhance day-to-day operations and the quality of life for their residents.”

“I am enthusiastic to team up with Bobby and the team at Turner Impact Capital to help tackle this housing affordability challenge on behalf of hard-working families living in communities throughout America, including the one where I grew up in North Carolina,” said Paul, a high-impact player on and off the court. He is a nine-time NBA All-Star, two-time Olympic gold medalist and serves as president of the National Basketball Players Association. “I want to see results, and this model delivers them for working people like teachers, nurses and firefighters who are getting squeezed when it comes to housing.”

The Fund’s leadership team is focused on acquiring, improving and preserving critically-needed workforce housing for those earning up to 80% of area median income. Residents include community serving professionals such as teachers, police officers, health care workers, service workers and others who earn too much to qualify for subsidized housing, but not enough to afford higher cost apartments or home ownership in the communities proximate to where they work.

In addition to its multifamily strategy, Turner Impact Capital is focused on two additional investment strategies to help address some of the country’s most pervasive social issues through real estate and infrastructure-related solutions. The firm’s targeted education strategy – the Turner-Agassi Charter School Facilities Fund, a partnership with tennis legend Andre Agassi – seeks to meet the growing demand for quality charter school facilities, improving the educational achievement and life outcomes for underserved students. Additionally, the firm is in the process of launching the Turner Healthcare Facilities Fund, which will seek to address the significant demand for quality healthcare facilities that deliver affordable and proximate patient-centered medical services to underserved communities.

 

U.S.’s First Organic Farm REIT

By
Gino Baltazar, MS Finance
-
The U.S.'s first organic farm REIT is based in Evanston

US’s first organic farm REIT, based in Evanston Illinois can’t come at a better time when organic farming and consumer demand for organic product are becoming more popular, in part because organic farmers can help set the price and value of organic produce.

Sound Benefits

The benefits of organic farming are manifest.  Practices such as soil-building, crop rotations, reduced chemical pesticide intervention all contribute to sustainable soil formation and structure, and increased soil biodiversity.  Consumers eat healthier food and produce and benefit from eating product that is less exposed to harmful pesticides.

Organic farms generate $558 in profit per acre, almost three times the $190 from conventional farming, according to one study. Consumer demand for most organics is outpacing production growth, says another.

***

“Many younger farmers are looking for funding, says Miller, noting 72 percent of his private-equity firm’s farmers are millennials. “The big guys don’t operate there,” he says, noting his average farm purchase is between 100 and 120 acres. “It’s hard for family farmers to find funding to buy parcels of small to medium size. We are reactive to farmers looking for a specific piece of land. It’s their business, and they come to us with a specific opportunity they want to finance.”

A small group of 10 original investors has grown to 250—from 34 states and Canada and Great Britain—who converted their limited-liability company and began offering what they say is the first organic family farm real estate investment trust in the U.S. on Jan. 1, says Kevin Egolf, CFO of Iroquois Valley.

The Iroquois Valley Farmland REIT public benefit corporation, based in Evanston, includes 32 farms across nearly 4,500 acres in Michigan, Maine, New York, Kentucky, Montana, West Virginia, Illinois and Indiana; 73 percent of that acreage has transitioned into certified organic land. It has some $30 million in assets, with 41,500 shares valued at $568 per share, Egolf says. Compared to other private farmland funds and REITs that focus on conventional farming, Iroquois is small.

In 2015, a little more than 2 million farms were left in the U.S., and 14,861 certified organic farms with 5.3 million acres—up from 12,941 farms and 4.8 million acres in 2008—according to the USDA. While the number of certified organic farms in Illinois increased to 218 in 2015 from 50 in 2008, the number of acres decreased to 27,275 in 2015 from 35,887 in 2008.

Iroquois partners say that bodes well for the company’s prospects as demand increases. “They aren’t making more farmland,” says Arne Lau, Iroquois chief operating officer. “We will always need food, and sustainable farming practices are critical.”

Source: Chicago Business

How SRI Can Wreck Your Portfolio – Contrarian View

By
Gino Baltazar, MS Finance
-
Aaron Brask

Efforts to promote capital to sustainable and responsible investing may backfire and result in unintended consequences, says Aaron Brask, a MathFin PhD who runs his own RIA in Jupiter, Florida.

Main Contention

Mr. Brask’s suggests that so called “sin stocks” tend to repurchase their shares at lower share prices that actually end up helping these firms.

Prescription

Mr. Brask suggests a prescriptive system that cross references lists of sustainable and “sinful” firms against their corporate buyback activities to ensure their implementation of SRI supports the right strategies.

***

Do Socially Responsible Investment Policies Affect Corporate Decision-Making?

This question is important for a large population of socially responsible investors because the intent of these investment approaches is often to influence corporate behavior (e.g., discourage investment in oil and more investment in solar energy).

See the figure below for a visualization of the process of socially responsible investing and the potentially flawed logic that this investment approach will influence corporate behavior.

Figure 1: Flawed Transmission MechanismHow Socially Responsible Investing Can Torpedo Your Portfolio

 

It is possible that cheaper valuations might alter management decisions by attracting capital to the buybacks and away from the actual sin-related business operations. However, I find this logic to be a bit of a stretch. For example, there are many companies with long histories of reinvesting capital for growth while simultaneously rewarding shareholders via dividends and buybacks. It is possible the cheaper valuations allow them to purchase a fixed amount of shares with less money and allocate more to its core business activities.

In general, I doubt buyback opportunities (often seen as tax-efficient dividends) would likely sway management in one of these companies away from productive capital investment opportunities.

Putting this together, it appears the conscientious investors who intentionally avoided purchasing the shares of sin stocks may have actually helped some of those companies who were repurchasing their shares.

Figure 2: Sin Stocks Tend to Re-purchase Their SharesHow Socially Responsible Investing Can Torpedo Your Portfolio

How to Fix?

The general goal should be to help the good companies while not helping the bad companies. A sensible strategy might be to identify the capital needs (e.g., raising capital or returning capital via buybacks) of the targeted firms and make investment decisions contingent on this variable. 

Animal Welfare Data Increasingly Visible to Impact Investors

By
Gino Baltazar, MS Finance
-
Poultry Welfare - Zoo Tecnica

Hearing the Humane Society of the United States teaming up with Folio so investors can now filter companies involved with factory farms that may be overcrowding and mistreating their livestock is really excellent news.

Significance

Animals have always played an important role in agriculture, in supplying humanity’s food. They also help recycle nutrients and add to soil fertility.

In recent decades as humanity’s population has grown immensely, animal industry has needed to keep pace. In the United States, animals are raised in confinement on industrialized systems that are more like factories than farms.

Additionally, feeding animals a diet that includes antibiotics, additives, hormones or pesticide-treated vegetation persistently raise questions on their link to longevity, human health and chronic illnesses like cancer and diabetes. Many consumers today prefer to consume meat that are more sustainably and humanely raised, as a result.

***

“We are very interested in allowing people to invest in a way that alligns with their values,” said Greg Vigrass, president of Folio Institutional. “Working with filters for investments has always been in our DNA and we recently stepped up the commitment.”

The Humane Society maintains a list of firms that engage in factory farming. Folio can cross reference investors’ portfolios with that list to screen out the firms that use factory farms. Folio uses a number of screens that investors can use to incorporate their philosophies into their investing, Vigrass said.

The screens can also be used so that investors do not become overconcentrated in a particular industry or market. More screens can be added any time advisors and investors show an interest.

Morgan Stanley is experiencing the same trend. “We are seeing evidence that investors are increasingly looking to financial service providers” to help them hone their investments to fit their philosophy, says Eva Zlotnicka, a Morgan Stanley analyst covering global sustainable and responsible investing research.

More food companies are paying attention to animal welfare issues and where their food comes from, which casts a favorable light on their performance outlook, Morgan Stanley said in a recent report.

Source: Financial Advisor Magazine

Impact Investing January Roundup

By
Gino Baltazar, MS Finance
-
What’s New In Impact Investing? January Roundup

Good January summary of impact investing news from various influencers via Pacific Community Ventures. Among the areas covered well are the impact foundations are making, emerging or maturing data management/metrics practices, and big newsmakers like TPG Capital’s $2 billion investment fund focusing on seeding social ventures in emerging markets like Africa.

The new US administration is expected to impact the social venture space as well – for example, as federal funding for climate change projects shift to other areas, private (foundations and family offices) and public sector (city/state driven like CDFIs) impacting investment funds are expected to pick up the slack, based on recent analysis by Forest Trends. Sustainable food and timber production projects, for example, comprised the greatest share of capital committed ($6.5 billion between 2004 and 2015) followed by habitat conservation ($1.3 billion) and water ($400 million).

Foundations of all sizes have been true leaders in the impact investing field, aligning their capital with their missions, ensuring a laser focus on impact and providing catalytic capital to attract other types of investors. Seeing the potential of impact investing for achieving transformative change, many foundations are looking to invest even greater resources in this new approach. To drive that, our partners Mission Investors Exchange are sponsoring an 11-week series exploring what’s next in impact investing and what we can learn from some of the most innovative foundations. Stanford Social Innovation Review 

As PCV’s been saying for years, impact measurement and management are a critical component of impact investing. Having a strong assessment framework in place means better financial returns and an easier time assessing social impact to make adjustments over the life of an investment. Now, our partners at the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) have put out three case studies in support of their recent report The Business Value of Impact Measurement. Each Impact Measurement and Management Case details the investor’s investment strategy, impact measurement and management practices, and use of data. The GIIN 

In the past two years BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset manager, launched a new division called “Impact”; Goldman Sachs acquired an impact-investment firm, Imprint Capital; and two American private-equity firms, Bain Capital and TPG, launched impact funds. The main driver of all this activity is investor demand. Deborah Winshel of BlackRock Impact points to the transfer of wealth to women and the young, whose investment goals, she says, transcend mere financial returns. Among institutions, sources of demand have moved beyond charitable foundations to hard-bitten pension funds and insurers. Read more in The Economist 

Under the new Trump administration, it’s widely understood that our government’s efforts to fight runaway climate change will be stopped and rolled back. But that doesn’t mean institutional entities across the country aren’t still working for renewable energy and clean air and water.

For example, conservation investing is on the rise and experienced dramatic growth these past three years as total committed private capital climbed from $5 billion to just over $8 billion, according to Ecosystem Marketplace’s latest report, State of Private Investment in Conservation 2016. It’s recognition of forests, wetlands and reefs as smart investments, authors say, and signals growing interest among even mainstream investors. Ecosystem Marketplace 

Trump Aims at Fiduciary and Dodd-Frank

By
Gino Baltazar, MS Finance
-
Trump executive orders
Getty Images

President Trump on Friday is expected to sign a pair of executive orders that takes square aim at the “fiduciary duty” which was just finalized in June last year and reviews regulations from the Dodd-Frank financial reform law for potential changes.

Stephen T. Mnuchin, a hedge fund manager and now the President’s pick for Treasury, had also promised to “kill” parts of the Dodd-Frank law, including the Volcker rule that restricts banks from making speculative investments of the kind that led to the 2008-2009 global economic crisis.

Fallout

The rules in place are critical to ensure people are not being steered to ineffective investments that reap big commissions for investment advisers. A prolonged dispute with Democrats and supporters of the bill on Capital Hill is expected.

***

Under the first expected executive order, Trump will direct the Labor Department to halt implementation of the “fiduciary duty” rule and completely re-review the project. The rule was set to take effect on April 10, but given Trump’s harsh criticism of financial rules, it would face long odds of being resurrected in anything resembling its current form — White House officials described the regulatory project as a “complete miss.”

The second order Trump is expected to sign will direct regulators to comprehensively review rules put in place under the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, another signature Obama achievement. White House officials said the initiative is not an attempt to “undo” the Wall Street reform law, but rather intended to “fix” some “overarching issues.”

Sources: Wall Street Journal, The Hill

Chicago VC Event Showcases Impacting Investments

By
Gino Baltazar, MS Finance
-
Venture Capital Showcase Highlights Socially Conscious Investments
CEO Jessica Yagan

Chicago-based Impact Engine, a venture fund that invests in early-stage, for-profit edtech, health care, enterprise software, IT, energy efficiency startups, concluded on Tuesday its 5th annual impact investing event.

The showcase this year was well-attended by a captive audience of 250 investors and entrepreneurs, and which included for the first time, a number of other impact investing funds to share its stage.

The companies that presented on Tuesday night have supported over 80 local organizations with at least $130 million. CEO Yagan attributes this growth to an increasing awareness of governments’ failures to provide social innovation and a shift in mindset, in which social and financial returns are no longer seen as mutually exclusive.

“There’s a lot more happening in impact investing in Chicago than there was in 2012 when we started,” Yagan said to the crowd. “In 2012, it would have been hard to find a whole lineup of impact funds and entrepreneurs to present that weren’t ours.”

Over a period of an hour and a half, six fund representatives and founders of the businesses they sponsor spoke successively to the gathered crowd. Some funds have industry-specific missions, like Ekistic Ventures, which invests in urban-centric companies like Kaizen Health, a business that connects patients with transportation to their doctors’ appointments. Others, like Impact Engine, broadly fund technology businesses with a social mission like Edovo, a company that reduces recidivism by bringing tech-based educational tools to jails.

“The people here are solving hard problems. Most of the excitement [in investing] isn’t around solving hard problems, it’s around code.” […]

Founded in 2011, Impact Engine in June 2016 last year closed a $10 million fund to help shift its focus from hosting bootcamp accelerator events to investing in startups as a seed fund.

Leveraging Data to Power Impact Investing’s Growth

By
Gino Baltazar, MS Finance
-

Sean Tennerson at the Case Foundation argues for common data standards and strategies in impact investing as the space matures to meet the needs of Millenials like herself.

Key Message

Projected growth in impact investing will require greater accessibility to relevant information, increased transparency on actual impact performance and standardized KPIs. She believes that data should be at the center stage to power the next stages of impact investing’s growth.

***

By data, I mean the details about who, what, where and how in impact investing. This information is essential to power tools, like the Network Map and other resources that can spur more investment and drive greater efficiency in the impact investing market. These details can be hard to locate if you’re not familiar with the space (to be fair, even if you are familiar with the space) because information is widely dispersed, when it is available it’s rarely transparent and it’s difficult to synthesize trends across the field because there’s no fully standardized language and metrics for reporting.

Alright, we know the data is an obstacle – let’s get real about solving it. From what I have seen and heard during the Network Map discovery process, the data exists and there is interest in improving accessibility – we just have to find the right levers to pull. Right now, we can find a good deal of information in reports from individual funds and investors like Unitus Seed Fund, K.L. Felicitas and F.B. Heron Foundation; from groups like ImpactSpace who are committed to greater public access to information; in press releases like this one announcing social enterprise, Workit Health raising $1.1 M; and even on Twitter – try searching “raised #socent #impinv.” Knowing that the data exists, how can we start to better put it in the hands of those we want to activate? …

More via Green Money Journal

Nick Ashburn, a Director of Impact Investing at the Wharton Social Impact Initiative, in a related December article weighing in on data’s importance, the milestone their team had reached, 100 impact investing private equity funds in its Wharton Impact Research and Evaluation Database (WIRED).  The database includes funds in developed and emerging markets.

But that’s just in private equity. Some investors are utilizing impact investing strategies across asset classes, including in public markets.

For instance, we’re currently working on a project to better understand the dynamics of public equity funds that market themselves as having a focus on women and girls.  What gender-related factors are these funds tracking, and what’s the financial performance?  As a possible gender-lens investor, what does the research base show about which indicators might improve the lives of women and girls?

Questions like these naturally remind us of the discussion around the ‘impact’ in impact investing and the variety of strategies and philosophies there. Some investors are interested in the impactful outcomes of their investments’ products or services. Others are more concerned with the business operations of the specific companies in which they’ve invested (for example, energy and water efficiency or human resource practices). And still other investors are considering impact-related factors as a potential way to better measure and quantify their exposure to possible risks in the market…

More via Wharton

1...131415...20Page 14 of 20
Invest Impactly
@2016-2017 Impact Investly All Rights Reserved. General Info: 2443 Fillmore St #380-4092, San Francisco, California US 94115
Contact us: support@investimpactly.org

POPULAR POSTS

POPULAR CATEGORY

Disclaimer: Third-party content, logos and media are owned by their respective entities and are used for informational purposes only. The factual information set forth herein has been obtained or derived from sources believed by the author and Invest Impactly to be reliable but it is not necessarily inclusive and guaranteed as to its accuracy and is not be regarded as a representation or warranty, express or implied, as to the information’s accuracy or completeness. No affiliation with these party sources, express or implied, is provided by their use. Use of this site constitutes agreement to these terms. The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Invest Impactly, its affiliates or its partner sources. Invest Impactly's mention of specific companies, funds, events, investments or securities should not be considered a recommendation to buy, hold or sell mentioned security, fund or investment, or endorsement of such event. Readers should consult their financial advisors before making any investment decisions. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Privacy: Invest Impactly thanks you for entrusting it with your information; it only collects the same basic information that most other websites collect, common internet technologies such as cookies and web server logs, and the minimum to operate, collect, maintain and provide you the features and functionality needed to optimize your experience, diagnose technical problems, personalize content and remember information to help you access your account and monitor metrics such as visitors, traffic and track content and users as necessary to comply with the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and applicable laws. If you subscribe to Invest Impactly and become a “fan” your name, information and email address will be viewable and discoverable by other users, in accordance with Invest Impactly’s usage. Your information is not sold to third-parties.