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From ‘Nice to Have’ to ‘Need to Have’: The GIIN’s Kelly McCarthy discusses the growing momentum – and ongoing challenges – of impact assessment
IRIS Senior Manager Kelly McCarthy at the Global Impact Investing Network believes that “the impact investing community is embracing the value of social and environmental impact data, which is very encouraging.” McCarthy spoke about the momentum behind impact measurement, investors’ changing attitudes toward it, and the challenges of getting companies on board in the Q&A.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing
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Weekly Roundup 10-23-15: Impact Investing Recovers from ‘The Cooties’
Most people don’t associate Department of Labor policy changes with excitement. But this week’s announcement of changes to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) has primed the impact investing movement to party like it’s 1994. We explore the move in this roundup, along with some inspiring words on what every social entrepreneur should ask themselves, and some critical points on business school ethics.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing
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Does Divestment Work?
Beginning in the early nineteen-eighties, students on college campuses across the U.S. demanded that their universities stop investing in companies that conducted business in South Africa, in protest of the apartheid system. As an example of social activism, the campaign was a phenomenal success: by the end of the decade, about a hundred and fifty educational institutions had divested. But did the campaign succeed in pressuring the South African government to dismantle apartheid? The answer is less obvious than you might think. The economists Siew Hong Teoh, Ivo Welch, and C. Paul Wazzan studied how U.S. divestment movements affected the South African financial market and the share prices of U.S. companies with South African operations. Divestments were expected, on average, to decrease share prices, but the study found that, in fact, political pressure turned out to have no discernible effect on the shares’ public market valuations. According to the authors, a possible explanation of this finding is that “the boycott primarily reallocated shares and operations from ‘socially responsible’ to more indifferent investors and countries.”
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing
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Will This ‘Back to the Future’ Move Put The Pedal To The Metal For Impact Investing?
A Return To 1994 Policy Guidance Clears Way For Pension Fund Fiduciaries To Consider Social Impact.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing, Technology
- Tags
- impact investing
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ImpactAssets Releases Annual IA 50 Impact Investment Fund Showcase
ImpactAssets has released its 2015 impact investing showcase, the ImpactAssets 50 (IA 50), a free online resource for investors and financial advisors. The fifth annual guide features fund managers representing private debt and equity investments that deliver social and environmental impact as well as financial returns.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing
- Tags
- impact investing
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The State of Assessment: Moving the conversation forward to accelerate value creation (Part 2 of 2)
Heather Esper and Yaquta Kanchwala Fatehi of the William Davidson Institute say it's time to stop debating whether businesses should assess social, economic and/or environmental impact, and move on to a conversation about how to extract the most value. They even offer five core activities to accelerate that value.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
- Tags
- impact measurement, scale
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The Younger the Investors, the More They Care About Values
The global investment management industry may not know what has hit it. Leadership does not always come from the grey haired folk, particularly in an age of fast technological change, where the best ideas can rise up from the crowd, without structure or planned deliberation.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
- Tags
- impact investing
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How a Techie Got the Nudge to Help the Poor
Atul Satija had a clear vision in his mind. He wanted to leave his comfy job at Google and embark on a journey to do some social good.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
- Region
- South Asia
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