Hi there, Agent of Impact! Welcome to ImpactAlpha Open, a free weekly sampling of the top news and views from ImpactAlpha.
🎉 Today’s Call: Policy action for shared prosperity. Abundant economic opportunity. Uplifted community ecosystems. Access to clean air and water. These opportunities require not only investment capital but effective public policy and incentives. Agents of Impact are working in a challenging environment to advance policies for shared prosperity in Washington, DC, and in the states. Join Mindset’s Heather Slavkin Corzo, Opportunity Finance Network’s Dafina Williams, Ceres’ Andrew Collier, EIG’s Catherine Lyons and the US Impact Investing Alliance’s Fran Seegull to map the new policy landscape, today, Tuesday, June 24, at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm London. RSVP for login details.
In this week’s Open:
- Apollo’s five-year search for ‘collinearity’ of impact and growth
- Raising African-led funds of funds to finance small businesses
- Agent of Impact: Austin Mwape is getting Zambia’s central bank behind small businesses
- Podcasts: Understanding fundraising in impact investing on Impact(ed)
Let’s jump in. – Dennis Price
Must-reads on ImpactAlpha
- Ownership, collinearity and KPIs: Apollo Global’s impact strategy turns five. When Apollo Global launched its impact strategy five years ago, it brought in impact investing industry veteran Lisa Hall to help shape the private equity giant’s approach. “There is an expectation, more and more, that impact approaches will infiltrate the firm,” Hall told ImpactAlpha at the time. Apollo has often been in the hot seat for its private equity industry practices, but there are signs that the seeds of impact that Hall helped plant may be taking root in Apollo’s broader business. Read more.
- African investors warm to regional funds of funds to finance small business growth. Years-long efforts to get local funders in Africa to step up with financing for small businesses and economic development are starting to bear fruit. “Fundraising has been good,” said Hamidiya Ismail of Savannah Impact Advisory, which manages the Ci-Gaba Fund-of-Funds, expressing a sentiment not often heard from fund managers in today’s market. Learn why.
- This year’s ‘Transformative 25’ highlights place-based, Indigenous-led, ownership-focused, and impact-first funds. The quest for market-beating returns, not to mention the broader retreat from racial equity and DEI, would seem to make quaint an annual list of funds that mostly offer returns in the low single digits. Not so, says Jennifer Astone of Collective Action for Just Finance, which recently announced its fifth cohort of impact-first funds dubbed the “Transformative 25.” See who’s who.
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Agents of Impact
Austin Mwape: Getting Zambia’s central bank behind growth capital for small businesses (video)
Austin Mwape learned the ins and outs of banking as the deputy governor of the Bank of Zambia and chair of both Absa Bank and Stanbic Bank in the country. Now with the Zambia National Advisory Board for Impact Investment, Mwape is working with his former colleagues at the central bank to unlock financing for small businesses while building a more supportive lending ecosystem. The central bank is seeding the effort with $200 million in first-loss debt to catalyze other investors to participate.
- Keep reading and watch Austin Mwape’s video interview in our Pathways to Growth series.
🏃🏽♀️ On the move
- Reinvestment Fund added Grace Chang, previously with Umpqua Bank, as a community lending senior underwriter, Kimberly Lundy as chief people officer, Patricia Luna as southeast lending senior director, and Ramon Estevez as a national lending senior underwriter.
- Keely Anson, formerly with Loamist, joined Autodesk Foundation as an energy and materials investment lead.
- GLIN Impact Capital appointedHideki Kojima of SHIFT Growth Capital as its growth strategy executive advisor.
The Week’s Podcasts
🎧 This Week in Impact: Lessons from Apollo and Mastercard Foundation. Host Brian Walsh takes up ImpactAlpha’s top stories with editor David Bank. Up this week: What the $785 billion private equity giant Apollo has learned in the five years since launching its $1 billion impact fund; from the Mastercard Foundation’s Africa Growth Fund to local African funds of funds, a look at Africa’s emerging ecosystem for small business financing; and, to mark this year’s Juneteenth commemoration, contributing editor Napoleon Wallace makes the case for shared prosperity with his remix, “The Reconstruction Will Not Be Televised.”
- Listen to the new episode of This Week in Impact. Get the podcast in your feed by subscribing on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube.
🧑🏽🎓 Impact(ed): Understanding fundraising in impact investing. For the finale of season two, advisor Alicia DeLia joins Lucas and Eric to talk about fundraising in impact investing, investor relations for grants and impact-first investments, and getting capital into the hands of communities. Says DeLia: “A lot of my work morphed from the traditional ‘How do you ask for money? How do you write grants?’ to ‘How do you instill and sustain authentic relationships with wealth holders that don’t feel transactional, and that will resource you for the long term?’” Tune in.
Get in the Game
💼 Step up
- Local Initiatives Support Corporation is seeking a director of community investments in Oakland.
- Wellington Management Company is hiring a private climate investing associate in New York.
- The Impact Venture is looking for a Cleantech VC fellow for a remote role.
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