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Full-Text Articles in Business
The Field-Building And Grantee Experimentation Role Of Foundations In Impact Investing As Illustrated By A Gender-Lens Investing Case Example, Courtney Bolinson, Laura Allan
The Field-Building And Grantee Experimentation Role Of Foundations In Impact Investing As Illustrated By A Gender-Lens Investing Case Example, Courtney Bolinson, Laura Allan
The Foundation Review
This article argues for foundations to play two critical roles in the impact investing ecosystem: to commission and/or support research that helps build more equitable and socially just impact investing and to fund grantee-specific experimentation in areas of impact investing and social enterprise that are nascent or developing.
To illustrate what this can look like, this article presents action research conducted on gender-lens investing, describing in detail a 2019 Mastercard Foundation grant to Engineers Without Borders Canada. The project involved two main goals: testing and developing gender-lens investing tools and processes with seed-stage investees during pre- or post-investment phases and …
The Ford Foundation’S Work To Build The Field Of Impact Investing, Margot Brandenburg, Abeda Iqbal
The Ford Foundation’S Work To Build The Field Of Impact Investing, Margot Brandenburg, Abeda Iqbal
The Foundation Review
Impact investing has grown dramatically over the past 15 years, with foundations playing a critical role through their program-related and, increasingly, mission-related investments. A smaller number, including the Ford Foundation, have dedicated grant and other programmatic resources toward growing the field. Without this funding, the metrics, engagement, policies, and norms needed to underpin capital markets at scale will be slow to materialize.
This article looks back at the long history of aligning financial investments with social values; touches on the Ford Foundation’s pioneering role in the emergence of PRIs as a tool to stretch grantmaking budgets; and details the impact …
Donor-Advised Funds And Impact Investing: A Practitioner’S View, Sam Marks
Donor-Advised Funds And Impact Investing: A Practitioner’S View, Sam Marks
The Foundation Review
Any discussion of foundations embracing impact investing must include some discussion of one of the largest — and growing — sources of philanthropic capital: donor-advised funds. These philanthropic accounts allow donors of all sizes to access many of the functions of a private foundation, including the potential to invest for impact. Sponsors of these funds, however, face unique challenges in catalyzing impact investments.
Like the larger institutional foundations that have led the way as mission investors, sponsors must often educate and inspire governance boards and investment committees. Unlike foundations with professional program staff, decisions regarding philanthropic resources at sponsors of …
Using Foundation Capital For Good: Opportunities In The Balance Sheet, John Sherman, Veronica Olazabal
Using Foundation Capital For Good: Opportunities In The Balance Sheet, John Sherman, Veronica Olazabal
The Foundation Review
Foundations increasingly use their full balance sheets to unlock more of their capital for good. They look beyond conventional grantmaking to pursue their charitable purposes in many ways that exemplify innovative, full-balance sheet approaches: investing in nonprofit and for-profit companies that offer clear social and financial returns; investing their corpus in companies whose products and services align with their missions; using social bonds to inject new resources into their programs; offering guarantees to help grantees manage risk; and avoiding companies whose practices run counter to their grantees’ efforts.
This article looks at the structures, pathways, and tools for foundations wanting …
Leveraging Foundation Balance Sheets For Greater Impact: Piloting A Pooled Guarantee Program, Jane Reisman, Jim Baek, David Newsome, Christine Ryan
Leveraging Foundation Balance Sheets For Greater Impact: Piloting A Pooled Guarantee Program, Jane Reisman, Jim Baek, David Newsome, Christine Ryan
The Foundation Review
A guarantee instrument is a credit enhancement tool that can enable philanthropies to unlock millions or billions of dollars for societal impact. The Community Investment Guarantee Pool, created in 2019 by a collaboration of philanthropies and allied impact investors, or guarantors, is a novel initiative that uses guarantees to leverage the balance sheets of foundations and other institutional investors for enhancing the credit of intermediaries in the affordable housing, small-business, and climate markets. As the guarantees are unfunded, foundations continue to keep their endowment invested in the conventional market.
This article describes the Community Investment Guarantee Pool, details its theory …