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Inside the Quest to Measure the Impact of Impact Investing
How do you measure the impact of reliable weekly milk purchases on the lives of small-scale Indian dairy farmers? What if you need to compare that with the impact on American college students of courses about dating violence and sexual harassment? This is the kind of valuation challenge impact investors have been grappling with for years. Purely financial investments come with an accepted methodology for measuring return on investment. But with investments in projects or organizations working to deliver social or environmental impact, there’s no shared accounting framework for measuring the value of what’s been achieved.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing
- Tags
- impact investing
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Courage, Optimism, Defiance: Impact Investment Exchange Founder Durreen Shahnaz Discusses her Journey of Empowerment
Growing up in Bangladesh, Impact Investment Exchange (IIX) Founder Durreen Shahnaz tended to rebel against tradition, preferring boys’ clothes to saris, and exploring the streets on her bike rather than staying indoors. Yet she never rebelled against her family's core focus on charity. Her long and distinguished career in social business and investing has been defined both by her maverick spirit and by her humanitarian values. NextBillion caught up with Shahnaz to discuss her inspiring story and IIX's ongoing work, as the company celebrates its tenth anniversary.
- Categories
- Investing
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Why Women Should Not ‘Invest Everywhere’: The Trouble with Gender-Blind Investing
As an impact investor interested in gender equity, Pique Venture CEO Bonnie Foley-Wong recently shared a call to action on LinkedIn encouraging investors to focus more money and attention on women-managed funds. She soon faced some pushback from a male impact investor, saying that women shouldn’t just invest in other women, they should invest everywhere. She explains why that advice is not as simple as it sounds.
- Categories
- Investing
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Donor-Advised Funds Grow in Popularity as Tools for Impact Investing
Donor-advised funds, a fast-growing way to make charitable contributions, may be the propellant needed to fire up impact investing, a practice that is growing but is viewed by some as having unfulfilled promise.
- Categories
- Investing
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Viewpoint: Missing The Forest For The Trees: Can Impact Investing Shift Its Focus To Where The Big Money Lives?
Put simply, the Principles will provide transparency into impact investors' commitment to impact.
- Categories
- Investing
- Tags
- impact investing
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Press Release: LeapFrog Breaks Impact Investing Record, with $700M (EURO 623 Million) Emerging Markets Fund
“As pioneers of commercial impact investing, our goal over the last decade has been to build truly differentiated investment vehicles, that present a compelling opportunity for top-tier investors to access emerging markets – and fulfill their financial and purpose objectives,” said Nick Moon, LeapFrog Partner and Head of Investor Relations.
- Categories
- Investing
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Unshackled Ventures Has $20m to Invest Exclusively in Immigrant Founders
Immigrants looking to start their own businesses face a huge barrier. Take Jyoti Bansal for example. He famously waited seven years before launching AppDynamics, a business that later sold to Cisco for $3.7 billion days before its initial public offering. Why? Because as an Indian immigrant with H-1B visa status, he could work for startups but wasn’t legally allowed to start his own.
- Categories
- Investing
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More Advisors Bringing Up ESG Investing With Clients
Financial advisors are being put under pressure to learn more about responsible investing, and many are stepping up to the challenge, according to Nuveen, the investment management arm of TIAA.
