NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Friday, November 22, 2013

The recent release of details about the performance of several impact investment portfolios and funds is another step toward answering the question more and more investors are asking: Is impact a boost — or a bust — in terms of financial returns?

“Institutional investors aren’t going to move on impact until they get more data,” says Lisa Kleissner, who with her husband Charly was a force behind Sonen Capital’s 65-page reporton the portfolio performance of the Kleissner’s $10 million KL Felicitas Foundation. “Who better than foundations, who are already required to be transparent?”

Separately, a dozen funds and portfolios holding a total of $1.3 billion make some of their performance results and other details available in “Impact Investing 2.0,” a rich mine of insights, best practices and policy opportunities. The result of a two-year collaboration between Pacific Community Ventures, CASE at Duke University and ImpactAssets, the report doesn’t attempt to make broad conclusions about the performance of impact-driven funds, but includes six case studies (with more to come) with a wealth of data and detail.