🎙 Ep 39 - Exploring new possibilities by blending philanthropy and impact investing

Plus, sign up for my new Impact Investor Matching Tool!

Here’s what’s included in this edition of the newsletter:

• Impact investors, sign up for free confidential, double opt-in impact investment matching

• New organizations have been added to my impact investment database

• Ep 39 of the podcast is live!

• Event Invitations

• Job Opportunities

• What I’m reading/listening to

• What’s on tap

🎯 Impact Investor Matching Tool

Attention all impact investors, if you’re interested in making impact investments and would like to be notified of investment opportunities that meet your areas of impact focus, asset class, ticket size, and other criteria, complete my investor intake form (see the button below) and you’ll be notified of any impact investment opportunities that meet your criteria.

This is a confidential, double opt-in service. This means I will contact you first to tell you more about the organization and why I think you would be interested and gauge your interest in being introduced to a potential investee organization. With your permission, I would then put you in touch with them so you can learn more.

🆕 The latest organizations added to my Impact Investing database

I’ve been slow in getting around to this (life has been hectic these days, even though the kiddos are back in school it feels like they’re being sent home every second week with a cold). Anyway, here are the latest additions to the Impact Investing Global Database. It’s a work in progress. I have a large number of organizations included in it where the data isn’t quite complete and thus do not yet show up in the public view of the database.

I have created a form that allows any organization to submit their information to be included in the database because I don’t have the time to do the data entry myself. The infographic, podcast, this newsletter, and the investor matching tool are designed to give impact businesses, funds, and other organizations the incentive to be included in the database. My hope is that, over time, I will have a reasonable cross section of the global impact investing universe included here.

Also, any firms domiciled in Canada also get added to the Canadian Impact Investing Landscape Infographic (also still a work-in-progress).

Here are the latest editions:

Tidal Impact
Location: United States
Category: Impact Management & Investment Holding
Description: Tidal Impact is an impact management and investment firm that supports companies and initiatives driven by social and environmental performance through a series of special purpose vehicles. We are re-thinking venture capital by developing a scalable evergreen business model, backed by a digital impact measurement and financing platform we’re developing, and taking a coalition approach to rally a variety of impact-driven stakeholders.

Good & Well
Location: Canada
Category: Family & Multi-Family Offices
Description: Invest in and partner with early-stage ventures with a social and/or environmental impact. Focused on student engagement primarily through an annual internship program of up to ~20 interns, encouraging students to bring their humanity to work. Helping to co-build impact ecosystem in Canada.

Nia Crowdfund
Location: United Kingdom
Category: Investment Platform
Description: Nia is an equity crowdfunding platform, the first of its kind, to facilitate impact-focused investment into exceptional African businesses that are contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals. Nia focuses on catalytic growth capital (ticket range from £100k-£1m) to help fill the missing middle financing gap on the continent. We work with institutional, sophisticated and retail investors to crowd-in investment for high-impact businesses.

Dragonfly Ventures
Location: Canada
Category: Family & Multi-Family Offices
Description: We use an integrated capital approach by making impact investments and charitable grants with a focus on toxics elimination, local and sustainable food systems, freshwater conservation, land and soil health, climate resilience while supporting equity-seeking groups.

Genus Capital Management
Location: Canada
Category: Investment Consulting
Description: Genus Capital Management is a Certified B Corp asset manager based in Vancouver, Canada. We have been at the forefront of sustainable investing for over 30 years. Impact and sustainable investing have grown to become the core of Genus' offerings after decades of evolution designed to meet the needs of investors who are passionate about climate action. Adapting quickly to the changing needs of clients and taking courageous action in new markets has been the key to how we’ve gained and maintained leadership in this market.

MovingWorlds
Location: United States
Category: Platform & Incubator/Accelerator
Description: MovingWorlds help social enterprises access connections, know-how, and skills-based support for any challenge. Through our S-GRID Accelerator, we help social enterprises build partnerships and sales with the corporate sector.

🎙 Ep 39 - Exploring new possibilities by blending philanthropy and impact investing

While the field of social finance and impact investing has blossomed in recent years, most people still tend to think about donating or impact investing as discrete activities with discrete approaches or strategies.

Say the word "philanthropy" and most people think of oversized cheques at black-tie galas where your donations are spent by organizations on goods, services, and programs. Say the words "impact investing" and most people think of rigorous due diligence where your money can be leveraged far more through investment and reinvestment.

But what would happen if we combined the two approaches? That's what today's guest is here to discuss. Farahnaz Karim is the Founder & CEO of Insaan Group; a non-profit raising donations which the organization uses to invest in innovative businesses and solutions for the poor, a term they call "catalytic philanthropy".

Farahnaz is a social entreprenur, political scientist, and humanist. She has worked with the OSCE, the United Nations, the World Bank and non-profits across a wide range of developing countries across multiple continents. Farahnaz was previously a teaching fellow at Harvard University and a faculty member at Zayed University in Dubai lecturing on global history and humanities. She holds an MPA from Harvard, a Diplôme d’Etudes Supérieures from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (Switzerland) and a Bachelor of Arts from McGill University (Canada). And if all that wasn't enough she is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Exeter (UK).

During this episode, we discuss Insaan's unique approach, the contexts in which it is most effective, how Insaan makes investment decisions, the unique ways they engage donors through the process, examples of entrepreneurs they've invested in, and their current fundraising campaign. And be sure to stay tuned to the very end where we discuss how Insaan measures and manages impact.

Resources from this episode:

• Insaan Group Website, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter

• Farahnaz's Bio

• Farahnaz's Alliance Magazine article "The Nature of Capital and Other Threats to Impact"

📆Events

Spring Activator’s Fall Impact Investor Challenge

Join the Finale of Spring Activator's fall 2021 Impact Investor Challenge to witness the pitches of 5 top early-stage impact startups in British Columbia, and see which business will be awarded $100,000 in investment by the graduating impact investor cohort.

Future of Good’s Fragile Future Conversation

From the organizers:

The world has entered an age of profound societal transitions. Never before has humanity been pressed to navigate and grapple with our responsibility for our future. We are at the precipice of creating the greatest intergenerational harm of any generation before us. The global pandemic and its cascading effects brought into sharp light the cumulative massive and micro-omissions — and negligence — of the past. Join Indy Johar and Vinod Rajasekaran as they host a series of conversations with changemakers from around the world on how our organizations might navigate this fragile future.

First up, Indy and Vinod host Biance Wylie, co-founder of Digital Public and Payal Arora, author of ‘The Next Billion Users’ to explore: As the global pandemic transitioned our lives and made us more dependent on the digital world for everything from socializing to accessing services to learning, what is the new independence?

📰 What I’m reading/watching

1. Interview with Dark Matter Labs Founder, Indy Johar (Embodied Economics with Denise Hearn)

   Denise is an upcoming guest on the podcast and author of Embodied Economics newsletter. In her words, “Embodied Economics aims to center what has been ignored, and it starts by recognizing the Forgotten Five of economics: the body, care, nature, interconnectedness, and power.”

   In this interview with Indy, they have a fascinating conversation addressing issues like, what if a tree printed its own currency? What is the value of a house or a neighbourhood? Do we have the right to destroy solid? Should land be owned?

2. Taking action against violence and sexual harassment at work through gender-lens investing (Impact Alpha)

3. Funding clean technology is the way to avoid climate disaster (Bill Gates, Financial Times)

4. Blackrock CEO Larry Fink: The next 1,000 billion-dollar start-ups will be in climate tech (CNBC)

5. Patagonia CEO: Companies should join us in boycotting Facebook (CNN)

🎙 Upcoming Podcast Episodes

• Serge LeVert-Chiasson of Sarona Asset Management joins us to discuss Sarona’s work investing in impact funds and other financial intermediaries across the Global South.

• Graham Singh, Founder & CEO of Trinity Centres Foundation joins us to discuss the fascinating work he’s doing to transform church properties for community impact.

• Sarah Burns, Founder & CEO of Nia Crowdfund joins us to discuss the launch of Nia and her efforts to democratize access to impact investments in African businesses.

• Natasha Friedhus, CEO & Co-Founder of NeedsList joins us to discuss her work applying building software and solutions for communities displaced by climate change and conflict worldwide.

• Denise Hearn, Founder, Advisor, & Author (check out her new blog Embodied Economics) joins us to discuss the problems with ESG and impact investing and more broadly, the market dynamics underpinning Capitalism itself.

💁‍♂️ Help me map out the Canadian impact investing landscape

I am building an infographic that maps out the lay of the land of impact investing in Canada. The infographic is designed to help viewers, in a single glance, get a handle on the major players across the impact investment landscape in Canada.

Keep in mind, this is a work in progress.  There are three ways you can help:

1. Provide any feedback you have on how I’ve defined or organized the categories. Send to dave@davidoleary.ca.

2. Let me know if there are any great organizations you know of that I should make sure get added. Send to dave@davidoleary.ca.

3. If you represent an organization and would like to be included, please complete this form.

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