An op-ed by Amy Bell, Executive Director and Head of Principal Investments for JPMorgan Chase’s Social Finance business unit.
Impact investing is a frequently featured topic of conversation at forums or conferences on philanthropy today. Its popularity is linked to the potential for impact investing to cause a paradigm shift in the way we approach philanthropy—targeting investment capital as a complementary resource for achieving the social and environmental changes typically pursued by philanthropic organizations. The momentum behind this movement pushed impact investing to the world stage at the G8 Social Impact Investing Conference in London last month, where UK Prime Minister David Cameron delivered a compelling keynote address about the power of impact investing to “tackle the most difficult social problems.”...