The Brief

The Week in impact investing: Abundance agenda

ImpactAlpha · March 21, 2025

TGIF, Agents of Impact! 

📞 Next Week’s Call: Sharing the wealth through employee ownership. Obstacle, meet innovation. Impact lenders and investors are finding ways to simplify worker buyouts and finance transitions to employee ownership. Essential Owners Fund’s Malini Ramanarayanan Moraghan, Social Capital Partners’ Jon Shell, Ownership Capital Lab’s Alison Lingane, Lafayette Square Institute’s Jack Moriarty, and other Agents of Impact will share emerging strategies for helping workers become owners, Wednesday, March 26 at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 5pm London. RSVP today.

🗣 Build with us. As a scarcity mindset grips Washington, abundance is catching on as an alternative framework for moving forward. In “Abundance,” the book, journalists Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson argue that increasing the supply and decreasing the costs of housing, energy, healthcare, education and transportation can give people more of what they need and want. After a “lost decade” that produced mostly AirPods, Instagram reels and crypto crashes, Trump-friendly elements of Silicon Valley have recently jumped on board, especially the part about removing burdensome regulations and other obstacles to building. “It’s time to build for America,” was the theme of Andreessen Horowitz’s American Dynamism conference this week.

Agents of Impact, of course, have long been busy building for an abundant future, as ImpactAlpha has narrated for the past decade. Agents of Impact voted “abundance” the word of the year back in 2022, reflecting what we called “a palpable desire to escape scarcity-driven, zero-sum and inherently divisive storylines.” Impact investors have allocated something more than $1.5 trillion to deploy clean energy faster, construct more homes in all communities, develop sustainable sources of protein, up-skill caregivers for an aging society, and otherwise build more of what people need and want. Don’t believe it? Impact investors in the Bay Area Equity Fund (now DBL Partners) were among the earliest investors in a fledgling EV startup called Tesla, as was the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office (you’re welcome, Elon). Today’s impact investors are developing new models to finance business transitions to employee ownership, cutting workers in on the value they help build (RSVP for The Call); Roodgally Senatus reported on Canada’s first employee ownership trust. 

Abundance was an organizing principle behind Biden-era policies such as the Inflation Reduction Act, which spurred massive private sector investment in chips, EVs, low-cost renewable energy, and other next-generation industries, and included channels to finance the building of faster, better, cheaper green infrastructure in places neglected by most VC-backed tech startups. In a tough market, private equity fund managers are differentiating themselves on impact (and getting ready for a flood of retail investors), as Amy reported from SuperReturn in Miami. But federal financing for that abundance agenda is rapidly being rooted out. Coalitions of community lenders fought back this week against the Trump administration’s continuing effort to terminate the nation’s virtual “green bank,” over a judge’s objection, and new efforts to slash the Treasury’s 30-year-old CDFI Fund, despite bipartisan support for community development financial institutions working in underserved areas (listen to Opportunity Finance Network’s Harold Pettigrew on the This Week in Impact podcast). CDFI advocates were cautiously optimistic that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent might be able to salvage the fund. “CDFIs are a key component of President Trump’s commitment to supporting Main Street America in the pursuit of job growth, wealth creation and prosperity,” Bessent said in a statement. 

Likewise, humanitarian aid from the US has helped build low-income and vulnerable countries’ ability to combat infectious diseases and support refugee populations. Some aid programs were inefficient or flawed, as Ellen Brooks of the International Rescue Committee acknowledges in a guest post. Her plan: “build from the ground up as partners,” and “co-design solutions with Indigenous knowledge and communities.” In emerging markets like Kenya, impact entrepreneurs, fund managers and ecosystem builders are rethinking how to raise and deploy capital. Women-led Altree Capital, for example, is offering flexible, revenue-based financing and convertible debt to small and mid-sized businesses addressing climate and gender challenges, as Lucy Ngige reported. Fund managers also are betting on biochar in Texas, alt-proteins in Asia and impact tech in Brazil, Jessica Pothering wrote in her roundup of new entries on our Liist database. Impact investors who look to go beyond point solutions are building, or rebuilding, whole systems, write Falko Paetzold of the Center for Sustainable Finance and Private Wealth and Jason Jay of the Sustainability Initiative at MIT. Systems to deliver sustainable and inclusive abundance for all is an agenda we should all be able to get behind. – Dennis Price and Amy Cortese 

The Week’s Podcast

🎧 This Week in Impact. Host Brian Walsh takes up ImpactAlpha’s top stories with editor David Bank. Up this week: Opportunity Finance Network’s Harold Pettigrew on Trump’s order to cut a Main Street lending program, which led to a rare GOP rebuke. Canadians are embracing employee ownership trusts as a path to shared prosperity – and national sovereignty. And how GPs are differentiating on impact as private equity fundraising becomes more competitive.

Next Month’s Events

Spring tour. ImpactAlpha is hitting the road with our first mini-documentary, “Equity and ownership: Napoleon Wallace and the Reconstruction of Black wealth.” Please join us at one or more of these live events to help assemble a playbook for shared prosperity.

Re:Construction North Carolina. GOOD TRBL’s Napoleon Wallace and ImpactAlpha’s David Bank will welcome Self-Help’s Martin Eakes, ncIMPACT Initiative’s Anita Brown-Graham, Partners in Equity’s Wilson Lester, Symphonic Capital’s Shruti Shah, and dozens of other Agents of Impact to the Ackerman Center for Excellence in Sustainability at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, for an all-day event, Friday, April 4. RSVP today.

Re:Construction Washington, DC. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and ImpactAlpha invite community developers, green bankers, ownership investors, unemployed staffers and other Agents of Impact to an evening of shared purpose and warm introductions, hosted by the Aspen Institute. Bring a +1 whose work or community has been disrupted. Tuesday, April 8. Reserve your spot.

Re:Construction Boston. “Equity and ownership” has been selected by the Boston International Film Festival for its Saturday night showcase. Get your tickets and join us for drinks and discussion, Saturday, April 12, 7:30pm ET. Buy tickets.

The Week’s Deal Spotlight

For climate tech investors in Africa, questions about returns, not risks. Investors in new technologies understand that risk comes with the territory. For private backers of Equator, an Africa-focused climate tech venture capital firm, the issue was the territory. Would typical VC returns for climate tech be possible in Africa? Back in 2019, Equator, a sister firm to Boulder, Colo.-based tech fund Factor[e] Ventures, hit the market as one of the first pure-play climate tech funds for Africa. After six difficult years of fundraising, Equator this month closed its first fund at $55 million, with capital from the International Finance Corp., French and British development financial institutions Proparco and British International Investment, and the Shell and DOEN foundations. BII provided an additional, catalytic investment to help the fund lock in a number of private investors, including Singapore’s Kibo Invest and American and European family offices and high-net-worth individuals. Those investors “were not worried about downside protection,” Equator’s Nijhad Jamal told ImpactAlpha. “They were thinking about the upside – the returns and exits.” 

  • Catalytic capital. Equator had initially structured the fund with just one class of shares. BII invested $10 million, the IFC and Proparco each invested $5 million, and the Korea Green Resilient and Innovative Development, or K-GRID, program chipped in a $1.5 million guarantee. After hearing from private investors on their concerns about returns, BII made the additional commitment from its highly catalytic Kinetic climate facility (for background see, “Risks and rewards on BII’s 10-year journey as a catalytic investor”). The boost enhances the returns of the fund’s first-time African climate tech investors, but not the returns on BII’s $10 million commitment or those of the other development finance institutions.
  • Risk shift. Jamal says this use of catalytic capital could signal a shift in investment attitudes. Overseas private investors have historically been preoccupied with the perceived risk of investing in emerging markets. “I think people understand and are getting more comfortable with the risk side of the equation,” he said. Equator and BII hope that as investors get comfortable with the sector, fund managers like Equator will be able fundraise without concessional capital. “I continue to believe that if we are investing in solutions that are bringing tangible benefits at affordable price points in large markets,” Jamal said, “we will see capital flow both from private and development-focused sources.”
  • Share this post, and check out all of this week’s dealflow reporting.

Weekend Watching: Pop Impact 

Hunkering down in a post-apocalyptic world. Sustainability themes and climate disruptions are all over the proverbial airwaves – but what are the shows’ impact bona fides? In the latest installment of our Pop Impact series, Dmitriy Ioselevich of 17 Communications reviews two “bunker” shows, in which people navigate life in the aftermath of ecological disaster (his earlier reviews covered animated animals in similar situations). What can the streaming series’  “Paradise” and “Silo” teach us about human nature and environmental disruption? More importantly, are they worth watching? As always, Dmitriy scores each show from zero to 15, with up to five points each for accuracy, entertainment and impact. 

  • Paradise (2025), on Hulu. This political thriller, which debuted in late January, focuses on a closed community of 25,000 hand-selected people who have been evacuated to a hastily built underground compound in Colorado. The bunker city, designed to look like “Any Town America,” is centrally planned and was funded by billionaires following a doomsday event. “What makes Paradise such compelling TV is its portrayal of how people process tragedy,” Dmitriy writes. Score: 10 (Accuracy – 2; Entertainment – 4; Impact – 4). Read more (spoiler alert!).
  • Silo (2023), on Apple TV+. In this dystopian series, 10,000 people are forced to live in an underground bunker because the air above ground is too toxic to breathe. The catch: Nobody in the so-called silo (which is 144 stories deep!) seems to know what made the air toxic, or when it might be safe to go back out. “Whether the disaster in the outside world is natural or man-made – or a combination of the two,” Dmitriy says, “there’s much to learn from Silo about how humanity chooses to respond to existential threats.” Score: 9 (Accuracy – 2; Entertainment – 4; Impact – 3). Check it out.

The Week’s Talent and Jobs

đŸ’Œ See and share more than a dozen new impact jobs posted this week on ImpactAlpha’s Career Hub and view hundreds of more jobs in impact investing and sustainable finance. Have a job listing to post? Submit it here.

Impact investing veteran Lisa Green Hall passed away Saturday. Hall, most recently impact chair at Apollo Global Management, was “a giant in the impact investing industry,” Texas Tribune’s Sonal Shah, a colleague of Hall’s at Georgetown University’s Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation, told ImpactAlpha
 Jonathan Rose Companies shared news of the death of partner Nathan Taft, who has been with the New York-based real estate firm since 2004 and helped launch its first social impact fund in 2005.

Project Equity welcomed David Kenney, previously with VertueLab, as manager of its Employee Ownership Catalyst Fund, which is co-managed with Mission Driven Finance
 Daniela Fernandez will step down as founding CEO of the Sustainable Ocean Alliance to launch a new ocean venture
 CarbonQuest appointed Jake Wellman, previously with McKinsey & Co., as director of strategy and market analysis. 

Inspire Access added Christine Roddy, previously with Clean Crop Technologies, as chief operating officer
 Generate Capital named Paul Ross, formerly with Bridgewater Associates, as global head of investor solutions
 John Sneed, director of the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, is leaving the agency. A new director will be named in the coming weeks
 Net Purpose tapped Caroline Brady, an impact fund advisor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, as head of partnerships. 

The California Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank appointed Andy Nakahata, previously with TD Securities, as chief deputy executive director and chief operating officer
 Tom Steyer’s Galvanize Climate Solutions added Chris Creed, former chief investment officer of the US Department of Energy’s Loan Program Office, as partner and chair of its credit investment committee.

Shell Foundation appointed Juliette Keeley, previously with African Leadership Group, as chief impact officer
 Aligned Climate Capital welcomed Greg Greenman, previously with Independent Real Estate Investments, as asset management vice president of Aligned Solar Partners
 Thistle Community Housing added Ryan Hanauer as senior manager of acquisitions and financial sustainability. 

That’s a wrap. Have a wonderful weekend. 

– March 21, 2025