Ford, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur and Rockefeller Foundations’ Impact Investing Highlighted
In 2015, the United Nations laid out its Sustainable Development Goals to track global progress against massive social and environmental challenges like extreme poverty, inequality, and climate change. But hitting those goals will take more than creative public and private partnerships: it will cost money. All told, the estimate is in the trillions, which neither governments nor traditional philanthropists can cover outright.
The good news is that, in just a year and a half since the call came out, the impact investing industry is picking up the slack. In 2016, investors looking for financial returns that demonstrate social good improvement committed $22.1 billion to 8,000 investments. All told, the emerging industry, which is less than a decade old, has at least $114 billion in assets under management, according to a recent report by the Global Impact Investing Network, a nonprofit organization to increase the scale and effectiveness of impact investing. . .