GIIN Investor Forum 2019

In this Forbes article, Anne Field covers the GIIN’s newly released survey, The State of Impact Measurement and Management Practice, Second Edition, emphasizing how accurate insight into impact performance is critical to the growth of the impact investing industry. According to GIIN’s Managing Director, Sapna Shah, “impact management is a requirement for all credible impact investors,” “it’s not optional anymore.” The growing interest amongst financial investors to step up “their expectations for reliable and comprehensive impact performance reporting” will offer enterprises the opportunity “to differentiate themselves.”

In this article, Elizabeth Eisenstadt Evans of the National Catholic Reporter dissects a variety of innovative financial initiatives in the global Catholic investing community and links these initiatives to the growing movement of impact investing, as defined by the Global Impact Investing Network. As Evans points out, “impact investing has broadened the choices available to financial managers” and broadened the community of investors, “attracting attention both from faith-based groups and secular organizations like pension funds and big financial sector players”.

This article provides important insights into the growing community of impact investors and discusses the need for greater and more comprehensive benchmarking “…to enable investors to quantify the impact of their investments.” Featured in the article is Director of Upstream Sustainability Services, Philip Hirst, who highlights that global real estate, with its “USD 1.5 trillion of new capital” over the upcoming years, will have stretched across a range of sectors “where investments can have a positive social, and environmental, effect.”

In this article, Tim Freundlich discusses the importance of “creative solutions that put more capital to work” to close the annual $2.5 trillion investment gap critical to realizing the UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. One of the solutions he identifies is ‘impact investing’ which, as Co-Founder and CEO of the Global Impact Investing Network Amit Bouri explains, is an industry that is currently “experiencing significant momentum.” Businesses of all sizes “are entering the impact investing market every week, and the industry has received a swell of support from governments, academics, and business leaders”, notes Amit Bouri.

As the demand for sustainable and impact investing grows, efforts to prevent ‘green washing’ and ‘impact washing’ are paramount for safeguarding the integrity of the impact investing industry. This article explores how Vornado Realty, Etsy Corporation, and LeapFrog Investments are currently approaching the concept of ‘impact assurance’, which enables informed scrutiny by third parties and independent verification.

In this article, Tom Freke and David Caleb Mutua discuss the complexity of, and confusion around, the ‘S’ in the rapidly growing sector of ‘ESG’ investing. While, according to the authors, what the ‘E’ and ‘G’ stand for is rather straightforward – environmental and governance, the ‘S’ – social - on the other hand, is not so specific and quite hard to pin down. This article gives insights into the different subsets to social investing.

This Pro Bono Australia article gives significant insights into the growing momentum of the impact investment movement, and provides an overview of what the authors identify as the, “core beliefs that could underlie […] a true Impact Revolution,” which they outline as: Equality of Humanity, Social Justice, Mutual Interdependence and Personal Transformation.  According to the authors, “revolution is not merely a reboot of capitalism into a more benevolent form. It is fueled by an entirely different philosophy and value set that is more conducive to the advancement of human civilization.”

This article by Michael J. Preston and Michael James gives a substantial overview of the impact investing sector. Preston and James describe how “impact investments themselves adopt forms and structures familiar to private and growth equity and venture capital investing.” They argue that the near future “may witness something of a paradigm shift, with investors turning to larger buy-out or control deals” and highlight that “managers and investors alike need to give careful thought to the impact outcomes that they will seek from their capital, and to how they will define social impact in order to measure their success.''

This Business Maverick article covers the current stage of impact investing and outlines the key elements and characteristics that impact investments must include, according to commonly adopted definitions. Furthermore, Dean Alborough explains the importance of impact measurement and identifies different existing impact measurement frameworks. 

This Environmental Finance article features the GIIN’s CEO Amit Bouri’s reflections on the growing impact investing market as well as how the GIIN plays a role in its development. Bouri points to the diverse range of investors, including big asset managers, banks, and fund managers, of all sizes, within GIIN’s network to underscore the diversity of stakeholders involved in the market. He also emphasizes that as the impact investing market continues to attract broader interest and gain momentum, it will play a key role in transforming the future of financial markets. Finally, he reveals that the growing “flood of interest in impact investing has caused the GIIN to raise its ambitions” and provides examples of ways the organizations is working towards safeguarding the integrity of the industry, mobilizing more capital for impact and fueling a movement to change mindsets about the role of capital.