This story originally appeared in our March 24, 2011 e-magazine. Click here to subscribe.
In a new report by Harvard University and supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, a strong case is made for government support of impact investing.
(US) The value of debt and equity investment in low-income communities supported by the U.S. CDFI Fund and other related policies. » Continue reading “Data: The GIIRS Potential”
This story originally appeared in our March 24, 2011 e-magazine. Click here to subscribe.
Past Beyond Profit interviewee, Morgan Simon, writes about her views on impact evaluation and the importance of community involvement.
“Get off your (ass)ets and do something!” was my creed for many years as the leader of the Responsible Endowments Coalition, working to get colleges and universities to move their US$400bn towards impact investment. Activists are known for impatience—we often want to see change happen and then move on to the next thing. Hence, pausing for impact measurement always seemed to me like a potential waste of time. Didn’t we have enough work to accomplish just convincing people to do impact investment at all?
I’m proud to say I’ve completely reformed. I have jumped full-force onto the impact measurement bandwagon. I’m excited that the organization I currently work with, Toniic, is serving as a Pioneer Fund for GIIRS. And I’m hopeful that as an industry, we’ll be careful and critical about how we talk about impact over time. » Continue reading “Impact Evaluation”
This story originally appeared in our February 24, 2011 e-magazine. Click here to subscribe.
A sector of affordable private schools is emerging in the developing world. But how can investors take part?
The affordable private school movement—made up of private schools where monthly student fees are less than US$12 (INR600)—is gaining momentum worldwide and providing low-income families the ability to choose where to send their children to school.
“Our experience has been that the low-income families are very concerned about the education of their children,” said Debasish Mitter, the Portfolio Director of education in India for the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation. “These families are making the choice to send their kids to low-cost private schools.” » Continue reading “Private Education for the Poor”
Last week, U.S. President Barack Obama proposed his budget. The most interesting part is a minuscule fraction set aside for social impact bonds. In this post, we explain what that means.
To create this interactive post, I used the free “zooming presentation” software Prezi. After the presentation loads, use the forward and backward arrows to go through the presentation or click on the target on the bottom right to explore the presentation. As always, let us know your thoughts.
This week in San Francisco, the conversation at SoCap focused on seed investing, metrics, and transparency, transparency, transparency. And, as expected, many of these discussions focused on the tradeoff between financial and social, and the need to measure impact. But, one of the central elements often missing in conversations about transparency is the need for sector stakeholders (particularly stakeholders that want to make money from social investing) to support the development of infrastructure that enables enterprises to be more transparent.
Let’s be clear. Many experts talk about how individual companies need to measure their impact. And that is an important element. But, in order to compare apples to apples, we need to think about larger tools that work across sector that can apply to numerous enterprises. And, investors can be part of the solution. There’s too much talk about the need for metrics, but a lack of ownership for the creation of frameworks to make it easier for social entrepreneurs to measure!
Let’s think about the elements we need to make a sector robust. First you need entrepreneurs and enterprises. Check. You need talent that has the intellectual ability and experience to build an enterprise. Check. At some point, you need capital infusion. And, in order to build out a sector, you need measurement tools and platforms for learning and information exchange. Measurement tools are important for measuring impact, and particularly necessary to ensure transparency and accountability.
A great example of a sector that is quickly going through the growth stages of building out these elements is the affordable private school space. Gray Matters Capital, and its many organizational arms, has had incredible foresight to build this space brick by brick. This is patient capital in action. » Continue reading “All this Talk about Transparency–Where’s the Action?”
By Diana Hollmann
The Customer Satisfaction Industry has been doing it for a while now – assessing the performance of companies by carefully listening to client feedback.
Today, it is common knowledge that in order to stay competitive, companies need to know how their customers experience a product or service. How else would companies know whether they provide what the customer really needs and whether the company is performing satisfactorily?
Over the past 40 years, private sector companies and specialized agencies have become experts in gathering customer feedback; creating industry benchmarks; learning from comparison with competitors; and, translating the lessons learned into continuous improvements of management and operations. » Continue reading “Social Investors – Listen to your Investees to Increase Performance”
Zara Khan, the Beyond Profit DC representative, reports from 2009 Global Youth Enterprise Conference.
Interview with Chandula Abeywickrema, Deputy General Manager of Hatton National Bank
Chandula Abeywickrema speaks about his experience in Sri Lanka partnering with youth who have saved nearly $60 million through student bank branches and microbanks in rural villages. Abeywickrema highlights the importance of patient capital, participation in community development, and non-financial interests.
Interview with Adil Sadoq, Field Project Manager with MEDA
Adil Sadoq discusses the lessons learned from his work with Youth Invest to create inclusive financial services and education for youth in Morocco and Egypt. Sadoq brings to light the importance of reaching the right audience and using accurate measures of success for nurturing youth entrepreneurship.
Interview with Gary Barois, IDEJEN Graduate
Gary Barois, 20, relates his experience as Hatian youth launching a successful local business to sell pre-paid phone cards. Except for his training and seed money from IDEJEN, “there was no faith” in youth being able to start a business.
So as promised in our earlier post, we wanted to share an update on the Global Impact Investing Network which President Clinton announced at the last plenary of the Clinton Global Initiative. The new network will create:
President Clinton spoke about it off the cuff, endorsing it in his drawl, giving it a uniquely Clintonesque vote of confidence: “This is one of those deals where nobody knows if it will work, but if it does it will change the future. I feel the same way about this network as I do about climate change, if we can make this economically viable it will change everything. This is of enormous significance and I really like it.”
The announcement is a model of the partners CGI can inspire to sit around one table:
The list of founding members reads like a ‘who’s who’ of venture philanthropy, including:
Acumen Fund, The Annie E. Casey Foundation, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Calvert Foundation, Capricorn Investment Group, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Equilibrium Capital, Generation Investment Management, Gray Ghost Ventures, IGNIA, J.P. Morgan, Lundin for Africa, Lunt Family Office, Omidyar Network, Prudential, The Rockefeller Foundation, Root Capital, Shorebank/NCIF, Trans-Century, Triodos Investment Management, and Wolfensohn & Company.
We would like to welcome Emily Davila as our Beyond Profit Guest Blogger from the Clinton Global Initiative. This is her first post of many.
At Beyond Profit, we have had our eye on the Global Impact Investing Network. Though the idea for the network was conceived in 2007, the GIIN has been laying low, quietly building its bank of investors. But expect to see the network in the news during the upcoming Clinton Global Initiative, where it will announce the members of its founding Investors’ Council.
GIIN has been given an initial grant by the Rockefeller Foundation, as part of their $30 million Harnessing the Power of Impact Investing Initiative, a not-for-profit initiative dedicated to increasing the effectiveness of impact investing, which it defines as investments aiming to solve social or environmental challenges while generating financial profit. While Rockefeller has given an initial grant to the GIIN, there are other funders involved who will eclipse Rockefeller’s funding. Intellecap’s own Sankalp Forum received support from this initiative as well.
The Rockefeller Foundation believes that the following challenges must be addressed for impact investing to reach mainstream investors:
The network has strong ties to Monitor Group and Intellecap (the company that publishes Beyond Profit), the latter of which recently hosted a stakeholder meeting to discuss the opportunities and challenges for global impact investing in India.
Social business blogger Rodney Schwartz, a self-proclaimed skeptic, has faith in the initiative. Smith applauds its international approach, and thinks it has struck the right balance between action and reflection, consultation and decision.
At Beyond Profit we plan to stay tuned – and we’ll try to deliver some fresh insight when we hear from GIIN first-hand at the Clinton Global Initiative where we’ll be blogging live.
For more information on impact investing, see the article we published in the first issue of Beyond Profit by Antony Bugg-Levine. Also of interest: the Monitor Institute report, “Investing for Impact, Social & Environmental.”
