The Brief

ImpactAlpha LP/GP: System-level investing at Sierra Club Foundation

ImpactAlpha · December 10, 2025

Greetings, Agents of Impact!

Welcome to this week’s ImpactAlpha LP/GP, where we take you inside the real business of impact investing and the dynamic relationships between owners, managers and intermediaries of impact capital.

☎️ Agents of Impact Call No. 75: Tackling advisor roadblocks. Clients want to do more with their money. Advisors want to do more with their clients. Financial advisors who engage with clients about their values and offer credible impact strategies can deepen their relationships and prepare for the Great Wealth Transfer. Join CapShift’s Liz Sessler, ImpactPHL’s Cory Donovan, Westfuller’s Randall Strickland and Glenmede’s Julia Fish, in conversation with ImpactAlpha’s David Bank, this Thursday Dec. 11, at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm London. RSVP today.

☎️ Agents of Impact Call No. 76: Muni impact investing for shared prosperity. Family offices, foundations and other investors are on the hunt for credible, place-based strategies that channel capital into resilient infrastructure and shared prosperity. Innovation, meanwhile, is helping rural and small jurisdictions expand access to municipal bonds and integrate impact investments directly into their public finance strategies. Join Lourdes Germán of Public Finance Initiative, Michael Gaughan of the Vermont Bond Bank, Damon Burns of Finance New Orleans, Eric Glass of Clarion Call Capital, and Brian Boland of Delta Fund, with ImpactAlpha’s David Bank, Wednesday, Dec. 17 at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm London. RSVP here.

In this week’s newsletter:

System-level investing at Sierra Club Foundation
North Sky Capital’s impact secondaries fund
Ring Capital’s growth buyout fund
GP snapshots: Branch Food, Proactive Realty, Ada Ventures

Featured: Conservation Finance

Sierra Club Foundation is dumping managers, innovating indexes and embracing system-level investing. Engage equity. Deny debt. That’s essentially the climate investing strategy of the Sierra Club Foundation, a $200 million endowment that provides operating income for the Sierra Club and sees itself as a demonstration of “system-level investing.” Sierra Club Foundation has broken with the environmentalist orthodoxy of divestment from public equities of fossil fuel producers and suppliers. In its fixed-income holdings, by contrast, the foundation is seeking to exclude and isolate debt providers supporting the expansion of oil and gas production, with the aim of increasing the cost of capital and making fossil fuels increasingly uncompetitive against renewables. Sierra Club Foundation expects to be an early investor in the Bloomberg Cambridge University fixed-income index to be launched next year. The index, one of the first based on decarbonization performance, could include, for example, fossil fuel companies that are no longer expanding and are phasing down in alignment with the Paris climate accord. Sierra Club Foundation’s thesis is that “the divestment movement is more effective on the fixed-income side of the balance sheet,” says Sara Murphy, who joined the foundation in August as director of system-level investing. “On the debt side, you try to increase the cost of capital for system-harming activities.”

Shareholder engagement. In June, the foundation dropped BlackRock’s Aperio unit as an asset manager, citing BlackRock’s “refusal” to address climate risks in its investment and stewardship decisions. Sierra Club Foundation had approximately $10.5 million in an Aperio low-carbon index fund. Since BlackRock completed its acquisition of Aperio in 2021, support for shareholder proposals linked to environmental and social issues declined. In January, BlackRock pulled out of the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative. “Eventually, we became concerned that BlackRock and Aperio were engaging, but they weren’t necessarily voting shares the way we would’ve liked to see them vote,” Dan Chu, the foundation’s executive director, told ImpactAlpha. New York City Comptroller Brad Lander has recommended the city’s pension funds re-bid BlackRock’s public equities mandates, and Dutch pension fund manager PGGM declined to renew its contract with BlackRock for a $17 billion mandate, citing PGGM’s sustainability ambitions.
Proxy voting. To amplify its shareholder voice, Sierra Club Foundation is working with partners on a “pre-declaration” platform to announce its votes on resolutions that touch on system-level issues. The platform would skirt legal attacks on what Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, has called a “climate cartel.” Republicans have also gone after proxy advisors like ISS and Glass Lewis that pension funds and other large asset owners rely on to vote on thousands of holdings. “There’s no coordination,” Murphy says of the new effort. “Think of it as a big pre-declaration platform – ‘We’re going to vote this way. This is how it looks. If you want to, too, you can.’ Anybody can choose to do it if their fiduciary judgment leads in that direction.”
Universal owner. The Bloomberg Cambridge University fixed income index is based on the work of Cambridge professor Ellen Quigley, whose work focuses on the role of “universal owners” in considering system-level risks that go beyond an individual company or investment. Climate change represents one such “un-hedgeable, systemic risk,” Sierra Club’s Ben Cushing wrote in June. A review of the Sierra Club Foundation’s investment strategies traces its evolution to what it calls “total portfolio activation”: “treating an entire investment portfolio – across asset classes and time horizons – as a tool for advancing systemic vitality.”
Keep reading, “Sierra Club Foundation is dumping managers, innovating indexes and embracing ‘system-level’ investing,” by David Bank and Roodgally Senatus.

Dealflow: Impact Secondaries

North Sky Capital seeks $250 million to scoop up impact secondaries. North Sky sees a growing opportunity to provide liquidity in the impact investment market. The Minnesota-based firm launched its first secondaries fund in 2013. A dozen years and three funds later, the market – in which limited partners and general partners can sell fund stakes – is booming (for background see, “Restive LPs look to secondaries and creative exits to recoup capital”). Funds focused on buying impact stakes are still a rarity, however. “There is a massively growing pile of private impact companies and AUM out there, and there is not an adequate pool of secondary liquidity solutions to support that,” North Sky’s Tom Jorgensen told ImpactAlpha earlier this fall. By his estimates, about 5% of capital raised for non-impact funds has gone toward secondary strategies; for the impact market, it’s about 0.1%.

In the market. North Sky is looking to raise $250 million for its fifth secondaries fund, according to an SEC filing. That’s about the same size as its most recent predecessor, which wrapped up fundraising just over a year ago. North Sky has picked up stakes at a discount in cleantech, recycling and the circular economy, and healthy living, and has helped fund managers set up continuation vehicles to hang onto prized assets. In addition to secondaries, North Sky invests in sustainable infrastructure; it closed its latest infrastructure fund in July.
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Ring Capital snags $252 million for impact growth fund. The Paris-based based impact venture capital firm this week announced a €217 million ($252 million) final close of its growth buy-out fund, with Tikehau Capital, French public investment bank Bpifrance and French impact investor SWEN Capital Partners as anchor investors. New investors, including the European Investment Fund, Groupe Crédit Agricole, French insurer Abeille Assurances and alternative investment specialist Investcorp-Tages, participated.

Impact growth. Ring’s growth fund invests in companies with revenues of more than €10 million that can drive social and environmental change in energy, healthcare and education. It has invested in 18 companies, including mobile carpooling app Karos, and LeHibou, a marketplace for senior and female tech freelancers. Ring, which has €470 million in assets under management, has backed more than 50 companies in eight countries in Europe and Africa.
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Dealflow overflow. Investment news crossing our desks:

Soros Economic Development Fund, FinDev Canada, Japan International Cooperation Agency, IDB Invest, Visa Foundation, Wire Group and others provided $7.5 million to EcoEnterprises’ fourth fund, a women-led fund focused on nature-based solutions and inclusive development in Latin America. (Soros Economic Development)
Global Infrastructure Partners, a green infrastructure investing unit of BlackRock, will pay BHP $2 billion for a minority stake in Western Australia Iron Ore’s inland power infrastructure group. (BHP)
Sweden’s Altor Equity Partners reached a €600 million ($698 million) deal with Bridgepoint Group to buy Evac, a Finnish company that offers waste and water management services for industrial customers. (Altor)

The Liist: GP Snapshots

Ada Ventures: Finding alpha in inclusive tech. UK-based Ada Ventures has been investing since 2018 in early-stage European tech startups focused on underserved communities. After nearly 40 investments, more than two-thirds of which are startups run by underrepresented founders, the firm wants investors to know that inclusivity is a key driver of alpha. The team is looking to raise $100 million for their third fund, named the Inclusive Alpha fund, to back pre-seed startups supporting climate challenges, economic empowerment and healthy aging. “Inclusive Alpha describes an investment approach where an inclusive lens is prioritized in every part of the investment process – from the investment team structure, to the investment strategy, to sourcing, selection and portfolio support,” the team wrote. “All of this is done to drive investment performance alongside positive impact.” Check it out.
Branch Food Ventures: First-time food fund manager. Lauren Abda has worked for a decade to connect food startup founders to corporations, experts and investors through the Branchfood network. With seasoned venture capital professional Marcia Hooper, Abda in 2017 launched the angel investing network Branch Food Ventures. The network has facilitated more than 50 deals. The partners are now in the market with their first venture fund, which brings an inclusion investment lens to the food startup ecosystem. The fund, Branch Venture Partners, is looking to raise $50 million to make seed and Series A-stage equity investments. The partners already have $4.5 million in assets under management. A majority of the portfolio is women- or diverse-led startups. Read on.
Proactive Realty Group: Fixed-income affordable housing fund. Proactive Realty Group, in Orangeburg, SC, acquires and preserves affordable and workforce housing to address the affordable housing shortage in the US. The Black-led investment firm has acquired, restored and managed 10 properties with 2,500 housing units across the US, offering the units at rents 20% to 30% below market value. Its properties include manufactured housing communities, multifamily building and single-room occupancy low-income properties. Proactive is in the market with a fixed-income strategy and a goal of raising $175 million. The Proactive Sustainable Bonds offer investors fixed monthly payments based on rental income from the underlying housing assets. The firm links a portion of its own profits to its impact outcomes, which are verified by Morningstar Sustainalytics, Impact Evaluation Lab and BlueMark. More.
The Liist. Know of a new fund or fund manager that others should hear about? Submit it here.

Agents of Impact: Follow the Talent

Steven Meier, who last month stepped down as chief investment officer of the New York City Retirement Systems, becomes vice chair of Neuberger Berman’s institutional business, where he will advise pension funds and other limited partners on asset allocation (see, “How New York City’s pension funds are recycling capital and pushing PE firms to lower fees”).

Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives, plans to retire in January… SJF Ventures promotes Jacqueline Lipkin and Perry Clarkson to managing directors… Minneapolis Foundation welcomes Nathan Wade, formerly at McKnight Foundation, as chief investment officer… The Nature Conservancy taps Jeff Mindlin from Arizona State University’s Enterprise Partners as chief investment officer.

ROC USA has an opening for an asset manager… Unlock Ownership Fund, managed by Impact Charitable, is looking for a director… Impact Capital Managers seeks a programs and operations associate… PVH Corp is hiring a corporate responsibility strategy manager… Galvanize Climate Solutions is recruiting an impact measurement associate… BMO Financial Group is on the lookout for a community development and economic equity specialist… Munich Re Group has an opening for an emerging markets sovereign debt analyst.