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Impact Investing


Impact investing refers to investments "made into companies, organizations, and funds with the intention to generate a measurable, beneficial social or environmental impact alongside a financial return".

"Impact investments can be made in both emerging and developed markets, and target a range of returns from below-market to above-market rates, depending upon the circumstances." Impact investing tends to have roots in either social issues or environmental issues, and has been contrasted with microfinance. Impact investors actively seek to place capital in businesses, nonprofits, and funds that can harness the positive power of enterprise. Impact investing occurs across asset classes; for example, private equity/venture capital, debt, and fixed income.

Historically, regulation—and to a lesser extent, philanthropy—was an attempt to minimize the negative social consequences of business activities.[needs reference] However, a history of individual investors using socially responsible investing to express their values exists, and such investing behavior is usually defined by the avoidance of investments in specific companies or activities with negative effects. In the 1990s, Jed Emerson advocated the blended value approach; that is, for foundations' endowments to be invested in alignment with the mission of the foundation, rather than to maximize financial return, which had been the prior accepted strategy.

Simultaneously, approaches such as pollution prevention, corporate social responsibility, and triple bottom line began as measurements of non-financial effects, both inside and outside of corporations. In 2000, Baruch Lev, of the NYU Stern School of Business, collated thinking about intangible assets in a book of the same name, which furthered thinking about the non-financial effects of corporate production.

Finally, around 2007, the term "impact investment" emerged — an approach that deliberately builds intangible assets alongside tangible, financial ones. A commitment to measuring social and environmental performance, with the same rigor as that applied to financial performance, is considered a critical, even indispensable, component of impact investing.


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