Letter From GIIN CEO and Co-Founder, Amit Bouri

I'm writing to you from Tokyo, on the eve of a busy week centered around scaling impact investing in Japan. After this week, I head to Singapore for AT ONE IMPACT WEEK where I’ll join a panel to discuss how family offices can align their values and visions for their legacies with their investing approaches (hint: it’s through impact investing). Then it’s back to New York in time for the UN General Assembly and Climate Week.

I’m sharing this overview of my travels to underscore what I consider to be one of the most important elements of working in the impact investing space: the power of in-person convenings.

There’s something that’s unlocked at in-person events that Zoom calls and emails can never replicate. It’s a specific kind of alchemy that’s necessary to build the community that will scale this work with integrity. The candid, off-the-record conversations in the hallway where someone asks for help structuring a blended finance vehicle they're stuck on or shares their own insights on why a deal didn't perform the way they expected — these are the sort of constructive (albeit vulnerable) chats that rarely happen on a scheduled call.

Trust, which this field runs on as much as capital, is built in rooms, not inboxes. And the relationships that move this industry forward are rarely formed by a single meeting. They grow through the accumulation of many small moments of recognition: sitting next to someone at lunch and discovering you’re working on the exact same theory of change, grabbing a coffee with a fund manager who becomes a thought partner two years later, or engaging a foundation lead’s curiosity about the KPIs specific to your fund. Impact investing asks people to take on real risk in pursuit of outcomes that are harder to measure than a simple return. This requires a level of trust and a commitment to community building that can only grow face-to-face.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the early days of the GIIN and why we intentionally designed it as a network in the first place. We knew this structure would best enable us to build the community that would help foster the relationships, information flow and accelerated learning needed to realize the promise of impact investing.

And so, if you happen to be at any of these industry events I mentioned, I hope you’ll reach out. I also hope you’ll join us in Amsterdam for our own flagship convening, the GIIN Impact Forum. If you haven’t bought your tickets yet, be sure to do so before our early bird discount ends next week.

Money Moves

  • Nuveen announced a first close exceeding $1 billion USD for its fourth Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy (C-PACE) lending fund which, through this U.S. state-administered public-private financing mechanism, will provide building owners with long-term, low-cost capital for energy efficiency, water efficiency and climate-resilience upgrades to commercial buildings.

  • ResponsAbility Investments closed its Asia Climate Fund at $461 million, which will provide private credit to companies active in renewable energy, electric mobility, energy efficiency and other climate-relevant infrastructure and business models across South and Southeast Asia.

News we're watching

  • Bloomberg reported on insurance company Swiss Re’s recent analysis of Europe’s record high temperatures that “reduce agricultural productivity, strain water and energy systems, damage infrastructure, and lower labor productivity.” This reporting bolsters the need for guidance, like the GIIN’s Climate Solutions Investing Framework, which focuses on evaluating investments that mitigate carbon emissions.

  • Grist unpacked new research and a dashboard from the Food Systems Countdown Initiative which tracks different metrics including “cost of a healthy diet, fruit and vegetable availability, agricultural yields, greenhouse gas emissions from growing food, and more.” The report indicates that “across the globe, progress toward developing more sustainable, resilient food systems is not advancing fast enough to meet internationally agreed upon deadlines.”

  • “LPs across North America, the UK and Europe say almost unanimously that climate engagement with their GPs drives ‘measurable activity and behavioral change’,” according to a new market survey by Risilience, via Responsible Investor.

News from the GIIN

  • Jacob Tate, Manager and Team Lead for Data Structure and Analysis at the GIIN, wrote a piece about different use cases where impact investors can expect ROI on AI. He’ll cover this and more during his session “AI in Action” at the GIIN Impact Forum.

Coming up

  • Later in September, we’re launching a new Applied Impact Workshop Series in New York. Join us for “Blending Different Forms of Capital to Unlock Impact” on September 18 or “Moving Your Theory of Change from the Page to Practice” on September 28. Sign up here. We’ll also hold an IMM-focused workshop at the GIIN Impact Forum on October 27.

  • Together with HSBC Asset Management, we’re hosting a Climate Week NYC event with a curated group of asset owners, managers and climate finance leaders for an interactive discussion on climate solutions investing, with contributions from the Rocky Mountain Institute and The Nature Conservancy. Request to register here.

  • The GIIN will release its State and Size of the Impact Investing Market report at the Impact Forum in Amsterdam. Don’t miss a front row seat for its launch.

  • If you’re a GIIN member attending the Forum, sign up for Members Day, our annual members only convening at the GIIN Impact Forum. This half-day event includes a panel discussion and a series of table conversations designed to help members network.