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Good for Investors, Good for Business: Helping Financial Advisors Embrace Sustainable Investing
The chorus of investors demanding sustainable investing has hit a fever pitch – not just among millennials or women, but among all ages and genders. This has not gone unnoticed by financial advisors, but meeting client demand for these investments can be challenging. The Investment Integration Project recently published a guide to help advisors get past their anxieties and harness the business-building potential of sustainable investing. William Burckart and Jessica Ziegler discuss the key takeaways.
- Categories
- Investing
- Tags
- ESG, impact investing
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A Financial Lifeline for Tech Startups: The Value of Bridge Funds in Social Enterprise
Social entrepreneurs working in next-gen tech startups are often well-versed in the intricacies of acquiring early-stage investments. But according to Sahaj Desai, they may be less aware of another type of financing that can be equally vital to their growth: bridge funding. Desai explores the uses and advantages of this funding, and why it can be uniquely valuable to social startups.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
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Paycheck, Please: Why Jobs Are Better Than Charity
Those of us who “won the zip code lottery” by being born in a prosperous country often take for granted something that’s out of reach for many people around the world: a stable and satisfying job. Suzanne Skees explores how the Skees Family Foundation leverages the power of dignified, secure jobs to fight poverty – and highlights what they've learned from partner organizations about how to maximize the impact of job creation efforts.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
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How Perceptions of Risk May Be Creating The “Missing-Middle” Funding Gap
The challenges small- and medium-sized businesses face in accessing capital in emerging markets are well-known. But Clint Bartlett and Michael Eastman wonder: What if the problem is not with the SMEs, but with the capital providers and their understanding of risk? They argue that the conventional perception of risk wrongly reinforces poor access to funding, which leads to a vicious circle impacting entire markets. They explore how shifting this perception could help funders see more opportunities and strengthen the system.
- Categories
- Investing
- Tags
- impact investing
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What the ‘Varsity Blues’ Scandal Says (And Doesn’t Say) About Bill McGlashan, the Rise Fund and Impact Investing
Bill McGlashan’s downfall at Rise, TPG's mammoth impact investing fund, has been making national headlines for the past week – sparking a wave of criticism that's putting the sector on the defensive. According to long-time impact investor Lauren Cochran, managing director at Blue Haven Initiative, the critics have a point - but they're missing an important part of the story. She explores what McGlashan's failings say about the Rise Fund and the broader industry – and what impact investing can learn from the scandal.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing
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Why Sustainable Food is Key to Impact Investing in China
Tao Zhang founded one of China’s first impact investing vehicles for environmental SMEs, with a focus on the industrial sector. But he realized that there's a pressing environmental issue brewing at the consumer level – a demand for animal products increasing in tandem with rising incomes, bringing greater greenhouse gas emissions and health disparities. Zhang shares how his Dao Ventures consortium is making consumers part of the solution by partnering with other impact finance entities to boost the availability of – and appetite for – alternative protein sources.
- Categories
- Environment, Investing
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Daring to Think Big: Why It’s Time to Scale Impact-Linked Finance
The 2030 deadline for reaching Sustainable Development Goal targets may sound far off, but for German-based impact advisory firm Roots of Impact, the “SDG financing abyss” is an urgent issue. Three of the organization's leaders say financing the SDGs will require new approaches to investing, including impact-linked finance – a merging of blended finance, impact investing and results-based finance. They lay out a blueprint for accelerating impact-related finance by incorporating outcome funds, utilizing technologies like blockchain and other strategies in this illuminating post.
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It’s Really Happening: Watching Impact Influence Capital
For more than two decades, impact measurement pioneers dreamed of the day when their tools would steer massive amounts of private capital into market-rate funds for social good. Now, writes Stephanie Kater at the Bridgespan Group, it’s actually starting to happen. Kater leads the Bridgespan team managing the impact underwriting for TPG’s Rise Fund, the $2 billion impact investing fund that Bono helped to launch. Kater pulls back the curtain on the processes undergirding the world’s largest impact investing fund.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing
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