The Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN – www.globalimpactinvestingnetwork.org) has held the inaugural meeting of its Investors’ Council, bringing together leading global impact investors, who use for-profit investment to address social and environmental challenges. The meeting was held from 26-28 April in New York. The agenda covered broad industry issues, such as impact measurement and lessons from the microfinance industry, as well as more specific strategies including community bank deposits and trade financing.
The GIIN Investors’ Council is designed to help active impact investors learn from one another and increase the scale and effectiveness of their initiatives. More than 25 member organizations attended this event. They represent different financial institutions including specialized banks, targeted impact funds, large-scale family offices, private foundations and institutional investors.
Camilla Seth, Director of Programs and Operations at the GIIN says: “Impact investing has drawn increasing attention over the last year, and this meeting was the first opportunity for the leading practitioners to collectively address the opportunities and challenges faced by the industry.
“The GIIN and its Investors’ Council members share a belief that through collaboration we can achieve better and bigger results.. these impact investing leaders productively discussed how to broadly accelerate the pace of impact investment, increase the creativity, ambition, and scale of the approaches undertaken, and improve our understanding of the real social and environmental impact of these investments.”
The GIIN Investors’ Council was launched in September 2009 as a core programme to provide a global collaboration platform to expand learning about new investment opportunities, facilitate sharing lessons learned, highlight and disseminate best practices, and enable opportunities for collaboration and partnership among members. As leaders in the industry, Investors’ Council members are also engaged in developing tools and other resources aimed at serving the broader impact investing industry.
The GIIN Investors’ Council has 30 members: Acumen Fund, Annie E. Casey Foundation, Armonia (Lunt Family Office), Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Calvert Foundation, Capricorn Investment Group, Citi Foundation, Deutsche Bank, DOEN Foundation, Equilibrium Capital, Gatsby Charitable Foundation, Generation Investment Management, Gray Ghost Ventures, IGNIA, J.P. Morgan, Leapfrog Investments, Lundin for Africa, National Community Investment Fund/ShoreBank Corporation, Omidyar Network, Prudential, Rockefeller Foundation, Root Capital, Sarona Asset Management, Skoll Foundation, SNS Asset Management, TIAA-CREF, Trans-Century, Triodos Bank, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and Wolfensohn Fund Management.
The GIIN is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to increasing the scale and effectiveness of impact investing by building critical infrastructure and supporting activities, education and research to help accelerate the development of a coherent impact investing industry. The GIIN is also overseeing the development and adoption of the Impact Reporting and Investment Standards (IRIS), a common vocabulary and framework for measuring and reporting the social and environmental performance of impact investments.