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Impact Investing Done Right
Impact investing—the art of creating portfolios that earn market-rate returns while also seeking to advance social or environmental aims—is a mercurial child of the 21st century. Hard to pin down with precise definitions and interpreted in a variety of ways, impact investing is nonetheless a fast-growing force below the surface of our financial markets, effectively blurring the lines between philanthropy and investing.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing
- Tags
- impact investing
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Putting the Good in Greed
Last April, two months after being named the first global head for impact investing at BlackRock, Deborah Winshel flew to San Francisco to meet with Ryan LaFond, a hedge fund manager at the firm. LaFond and a team of researchers had spent two years studying whether algorithms used to predict fluctuations in the stock market could also spot a company whose business is doing good. Identifying responsible corporate citizens was part of the reason Winshel left her job as president of the poverty-fighting Robin Hood Foundation; she believes Wall Street has a role to play in fixing some of the world’s most urgent problems.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing
- Tags
- impact investing
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Smallholder Farmers and Big Business: 5 Insights from the Field
Modern agricultural practices and new technologies have transformed the productivity and lives of large farmers, but often fail to reach small and very small farmers for a variety of reasons. However, some pioneer companies and organizations across the world have sustainably increased the income and livelihoods of millions of smallholder farmers, by sourcing produce from them or selling products to them. What do these pioneers tell us?
- Categories
- Agriculture, Impact Assessment
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Mobile-izing Savings with Defaults in Afghanistan
The number of people with phones is far higher than the number of people who have easy access to traditional bank branches, especially among the rural poor. Until now, however, no one has tested whether mobile banking can facilitate default savings programs. This is exactly what a team led by Innovations for Poverty Action set out to do in Afghanistan.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Technology
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Vodafone India Looks to Double Impact of CSR Programme
Vodafone India wants to double the impact of its corporate social responsibility (CSR) programme. Last year, around 50 employees volunteered for CSR initiatives, working for eight weeks at 25 NGOs and impacting about 1 million lives.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing
- Region
- South Asia
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Unitus Seed Fund to Raise $50 Million in Second Innings
Unitus Seed Fund, a 'social impact investor' that invests at very early seed stages, says it is raising a second fund of $50 million.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing
- Region
- South Asia
- Tags
- impact investing
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Buffett’s Grandson Seeks Own Investment Route: Social Change
At 32, Howard Warren Buffett, the grandson of the Berkshire Hathaway founder Warren E. Buffett, has already enjoyed a diverse career.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing
- Tags
- impact investing
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MissionHUB Launches Strategic Nonprofit Partnership with ImpactAssets
MissionHUB, a global marketplace for social innovation with Impact Hub campuses in San Francisco, Berkeley, New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C., as well as the Social Capital Markets Conference (SOCAP) for impact investing, has launched a strategic partnership with ImpactAssets, a nonprofit financial services firm that increases the flow of capital into investments that deliver financial, social and environmental returns.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
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