Can Investors Put 100% of Funds to Work for Social Benefit?
An Emerging Movement Says Yes
Originally published on CSRwire
By Don Shaffer
When I first started working in impact investing, the field’s challenges were foundational: refining the concept, finding suitable investments, figuring out how to measure impact, even determining what to call the concept. Work in all those areas continues, but the field has matured to the point where it’s on the agenda of the G8, finance conglomerates feel they need to have an impact product, and the mainstream business press is taking notice (if skeptically). Now I’m seeing an enormous amount of energy pouring into our next great challenge: cultivating a vanguard of 100 percent impact investors, people who devote their entire portfolio to funding enterprises that strive to produce social and ecological benefits as a core part of their mission.
I’m privileged to have an inside view of this nascent movement. At RSF Social Finance, we’ve been working for years with clients and partner organizations to promote this increased level of commitment and to seed the infrastructure that supports it. And momentum is building: the push toward 100 percent impact (sometimes called whole portfolio activation) is where the action is in impact investing.
Who are the 100 percent impact investors?
Most people investing for impact have only a portion of their money in impact investments; 100 percent impact investors are working toward going all in. What’s driving them? My sense from talking with people attracted to this movement is that many people of means are having an existential crisis about climate change and other problems in which they know they’re complicit. They want to understand where their money is going and direct it to solving the problems they are passionate about. Just investing in a mutual fund that’s screening out bad things is not good enough anymore.
Don Shaffer is President & CEO at RSF Social Finance
