
The Current Approach to Scaling Impact Capital isn’t Working: Why Addressing the Polycrisis Requires More ‘Impact-Native’ Capital
Impact investing must scale if it hopes to address the interconnected social and environmental problems that comprise the global polycrisis. Yet as Tripp Baird at Builders Fund explains, a substantial amount of “impact” capital flows to large asset aggregator financial institutions whose impact and ESG-branded funds include investments in unaligned or actively counter-productive assets — e.g., sustainability funds that invest in mining companies — making it virtually impossible to effect lasting change. He argues that purpose-driven investors should choose “impact-native” investment firms, which provide a real alternative to the extractive and short-term focus of traditional capital markets.