Global Impact Investing Ratings, Analytics Platform Launches
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
NEW YORK, Sept. 20, 2011 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting — Today B Lab announces at CGI the launch of GIIRS Ratings & Analytics, and the commitment of 15 GIIRS Pioneer Investors who declare as part of their impact investing strategy an investment preference for GIIRS-rated funds and companies.
GIIRS Impact Ratings provide investors for the first time with a comprehensive, comparable, and third party verified assessment of companies’ and funds’ social and environmental impact. The GIIRS Analytics platform gives investors uniquely powerful tools to analyze aggregated, verified and comparable data on the social and environmental impact of companies and funds across geography, sector, organizational maturity, and size. The launch of GIIRS Ratings & Analytics follows a successful global beta test with more than 200 companies across 30 countries from 25 leading impact investing funds (the GIIRS Pioneer Companies and Funds, respectively).
The GIIRS Pioneer Investors are a diverse group of global private equity investors and credit providers, including mainstream global financial institutions, foundations, family offices, leaders in social finance, and a multilateral development bank. They include: Annie E Casey Foundation, Armonia LLC, Calvert Foundation, Farm Capital Services LLC, Gatsby Charitable Foundation, Impact Investing Foundation, Inter-American Development Bank, J.P. Morgan, KL Felicitas Foundation, , Prudential Financial, Inc., The Rockefeller Foundation, RSF Social Finance, Skoll Foundation, The Tony Elumelu Foundation and W.K. Kellogg Foundation. GIIRS expects to announce additional GIIRS Pioneer Investors in the coming months.
“These Pioneer Investors recognize that we can’t build an industry for impact investments without credible, comparable metrics on impact,” said Andrew Kassoy, co-founder of B Lab, the non-profit organization powering GIIRS. “GIIRS has the potential to catalyze hundreds of billions of dollars of sidelined investment capital to flow to the world’s most inspiring and talented entrepreneurs. These businesses demonstrably create high quality jobs that increase economic opportunity here and abroad.”
