Impact Investing 2.0

Services: Field-Building Research
Client Type: Foundation
Geography: International

The Objective

Pacific Community Ventures, the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) at Duke University, and Impact Assets, received a grant to identify the shared characteristics and practices of impact investors who had demonstrated outstanding financial and social performance, in order to better understand the determinants of impact funds’ performance and to create a practical resource for impact investing practitioners (fund managers, investors, entrepreneurs, policy makers, and advisors) creating or managing impact funds. The mission investors we profiled included RSF Social Finance, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Accion, Huntington Capital, Deutsche Bank, and others.

The Approach

Our research was structured around building in-depth profiles of twelve funds in various sectors and geographies, ranging from microfinance in India to sustainable property in the UK, with differing investment strategies and approaches to social and environmental impact.

To develop case studies and the report, our research team interviewed dozens of key stakeholders including fund managers, limited partners and portfolio companies.

The Results

The report and case studies received over 20,000 views from impact investing practitioners, academics and intermediaries in 113 countries and has been used to teach impact investing courses by leading educators at Duke, Harvard, and Stanford University.

Studying the twelve profiled funds enabled the research team to distill numerous lessons for the industry and beyond, including the identification of four key themes relevant to impact investing fund performance: Policy Symbiosis, Catalytic Capital, Multilingual Leadership, and Mission First and Last.