Next Steps to Grow the Sector
Steve McCurry
The impact investing industry stands at a pivotal moment in its development. Key institutions providing networks and infrastructure, such as the GIIN and GIIRS, are in place. Intermediary structures – funds, funds-of-funds, deal sharing platforms and dedicated exchanges – now exist. A robust research and advocacy capacity has taken root in a number of countries. Interest and activity are underway across a range of investor segments. The future of impact investing depends on what we do now. The Rockefeller Foundation looks ahead to the next phase of work.
Impact Investment Exchange Asia
Kishore Moorjani, Matthew Gamser, Sumita Ghose, Bart Edes, Judith Rodin
On Thursday, September 29, President of the Rockefeller Foundation Dr. Judith Rodin led a panel on Impact Investing hosted by the Impact Investment Exchange Asia — a Rockefeller Foundation grantee — at INSEAD's Singapore campus. The event highlighted the growing relevance of the Impact Investing sector in sustainable development in Asia.
It’s going to take far more money than all the philanthropies and governments have at their disposal to make a significant impact on improving the lives of all the poor and vulnerable people in the world. Impact investing— which helps address social and/or environmental problems while also turning a profit—could unlock substantial for-profit investment capital to complement philanthropy in addressing pressing social challenges.
Our Strategy
The Foundation’s Harnessing the Power of Impact Investing initiative aims to overcome the major obstacle to the growth of the impact investing industry by:
- Catalyzing platforms for collective action that enable leading impact investors and intermediaries to coordinate efforts, such as disseminating standards, and sharing information
- Supporting the development of scaled intermediation vehicles that help absorb impact investments at a scale necessary to attract the institutional investors who control the lion’s share of global capital and are seeking social impact
- Building industry-wide infrastructure that enables broader and more effective participation in the impact investing industry
- Supporting research and advocacy efforts that promote an analytical understanding of the impact investing industry and take necessary steps to facilitate its maturation
Key Outcomes
This initiative seeks to help accelerate the development of an industry that can efficiently place for-profit impact investments to improve a wide range of social and/or environmental conditions. We work on four goals to achieve measurable outcomes:
- Spark collective action platforms for impact investing industry leaders to coordinate investment and promote the infrastructure, activities, education, research and collaboration needed for the industry to tackle a wider range of social challenges more efficiently.
- Develop industry infrastructure to sustainably support impact investors in tackling a wider range of social challenges with for-profit investment and improve industry performance.
- Support scaling of organizations and structures (such as private equity funds and investment clubs) used to aggregate institutional-scale impact investments and place them efficiently with investees who use this capital in a range of areas (including improving agricultural productivity and enhancing access to healthcare and decent housing) and geographies.
