Guest Articles

Tuesday
February 9
2016

Scott Anderson

Announcing Our New Partnership with ImpactSpace

Impact investing has left the realm of the theoretical and moved confidently into the practical. Yet for wealth managers who are making very real decisions about where to place millions – and indeed billions – of dollars, there are few data-rich resources on impact-focused funds, businesses and the people running them.

We have long been on the lookout for a media partner that’s creating deep and useful market data for the companies we cover on NextBillion. That’s why today we’re thrilled to announce a media partnership with our friends at ImpactSpace, a new open data platform created to fill the information gap in impact investing.

ImpactSpace and its sister site ImpactAlpha are part of ImpactAlpha Inc., which was created to help people explore the growing number of social ventures making a positive change. We were impressed by the breadth and depth of ImpactSpace’s work. In a relatively short period of time, they have compiled profiles of more than 5,800 companies, 1,900 investors and almost 4,000 people involved in social business and investing. These profiles, created through an expansive open database, provide a wealth of useful information in one convenient location. The data points include each fund or firm’s senior leadership, headquarters, geographic focus, corporate structure, portfolio and social objectives. Companies and funds can add and update their ImpactSpace profiles to gain exposure, find partners and source deals.

Starting today, NextBillion is embedding these condensed ImpactSpace-generated profiles within relevant NextBillion articles. For example, check out Monday’s post on our Q&A with LeapFrog Investments, which includes its own thumbnail sketch of LeapFrog’s work, but also links to the company’s broader profile. We’ve already added dozens of ImpactSpace profiles to multiple NextBillion articles – a few notable posts can be found here, here and here.

We’re also grateful that ImpactSpace will be sharing links to related NextBillion articles in those same company and investment fund profiles, giving its readers an additional source of information and insights about the companies it’s profiling. We believe this partnership will help readers of both ImpactSpace and NextBillion to significantly expand their knowledge, enhance their research capabilities and make even better investment decisions.

“The growth of market-based solutions to today’s urgent development challenges is a real bright spot in the global economy,” Zuleyma Bebell, co-founder of ImpactSpace and director of operations at ImpactAlpha Inc., said of the partnership. “NextBillion is an ideal partner to help raise the visibility of this new wave of change-makers. “We are delighted to enhance ImpactSpace profiles with NextBillion’s market-leading coverage,” Bebell said.

We appreciate Bebell’s kind words and we’re equally excited to launch this new partnership.

 

Scott Anderson is the managing editor of NextBillion.

Categories
Impact Assessment, Investing
Tags
impact investing, impact measurement, public-private partnerships