The Impact World this Week: 12 September 2024
Your quick guide to the most interesting news snippets about social enterprise, impact investment and mission-driven business around the world from the Pioneers Post team. This week: Fearless Fund drops grant programme for black women, the Body Shop is rescued from administration, Draghi slams sustainability reporting laws, and more.
US: Fearless Fund has shut down its programme to support Black women entrepreneurs after it was sued for racial discrimination by a conservative group. The venture capital fund agreed to close its grant programme in order to settle the case brought against it by right-wing nonprofit American Alliance for Equal Rights, which argued the firm was discriminatory on the basis of race. Lawyer Ben Crump, who represented Fearless Fund in the year-long court battle, said the move was “strategic” to avoid a Supreme Court ruling that “could have eliminated race-based funding” entirely, for all funds in the country. Fearless Fund will continue its other activities, announcing a new US$200m debt loan programme aimed at supporting under-resourced entrepreneurs, Crump said. He added: “This initiative reflects their ongoing commitment to advancing equity and creating opportunities for those who have been historically marginalised.”
Italy: The Quiet Son was the film recognised as having the most “societal impact potential” at this year’s Venice Film Festival. The 2024 Collateral Impact Award was presented this week by consultancy Think-Film Impact Production, which produces films that address social and political issues, and Europe’s impact investor network Impact Europe. The French film explores family dynamics amidst far-right radicalisation, and this is the second time that there has been an impact award at the film festival.
The Body Shop's new owners say they will "pay homage to the brand's ethical and activist positioning". Image © Hazel Nicholson via Flickr
UK: The Body Shop, the pioneering ethical cosmetics retailer, has been bought out of administration by British cosmetics tycoon Mike Jatania’s Aurea Group. A statement said that Aurea would “steer the Body Shop’s revival and reclaim its global leadership in the ethical beauty sector it pioneered”. Reports say that all the remaining 100+ UK stores will stay open, and ex-Molton Brown CEO Charles Denton will become CEO. The statement added that the new owners would invest in product innovation “while paying homage to the brand’s ethical and activist positioning”. The company lost its B Corp status in June.
- Read more: ‘A lost opportunity’: The Body Shop’s collapse into administration is mourned by impact community
Asia: Philanthropists in Asia are becoming increasingly significant, with the region’s wealth growing 1.7 times faster than the global average. But experts are concerned that efforts are fragmented rather than being strategic. So a new Commission on Asian Philanthropy was launched on 10 September in Hong Kong which aims to unite prominent philanthropic organisations across Asia in a “collaborative, sector-building effort”. The Commission on Asian Philanthropy is co-convened by the Institute of Philanthropy (a “think-fund-do tank”) and the Asia Philanthropy Congress. AVPN, the social investment network for Asia, is also involved as a co-secretariat.
Mario Draghi at the European Commission this week. © European Union, 2024
Europe: EU sustainability reporting laws were lambasted as a ‘major source of regulatory burden’, stifling competitiveness and innovation, in the Draghi report on European competitiveness, published this week. The directives (including the recent corporate sustainability due diligence directive, CSDDD) passed in recent years that require financial institutions and big companies to disclose their impact on society and the planet have been hailed for bringing more impact transparency and countering greenwashing, but the paper (which weighs in at 300+ pages) criticises the compliance costs. It points to the effect on SMEs which, while not directly required to produce sustainability reports, end up having to do so because they are part of a bigger company’s value chain or to access investment. The report recommends simplifying the rules to “strike the right balance between the principle of precaution and the principle of innovation”, and to use technology and AI to make sustainability reporting easier.
Europe: A consortium of organisations including Impact Europe and GSG Impact has created a harmonised definition of impact investing and related concepts with the aim to create a bi-annual market sizing study of the pan-European impact investing market. The resulting paper, The 5 Ws of Impact Investing (Why, What, Who, Where, When), insists on the intentionality and measurability of impact in impact investing; the difference between responsible, sustainable, impact and additional impact investing; and distinguishing between businesses simply trying to avoid harm, those benefiting stakeholders and the ones actively contributing to solutions.
Christina Murrell, treasurer and enterprise managing director at Veterans at Ease, a Key Fund investee
UK: Two pioneers of social investment have each announced a new multi-million pound deal this week. Key Fund, which launched one of the first blended-finance social investment funds in 2002, has secured £8.45m for its Northern Impact Fund 2, which will provide between £5,000 to £150,000 in blended investment (a mix of grants and loans) to social enterprises and charities in the Midlands and north of England. Investors include Access, the foundation for social investment, Better Society Capital, Barrow Cadbury Trust and others. Meanwhile, the Charities Aid Foundation, the 100-year-old charity that has invested more than £61m since the beginning of its social investment work in 2002, is launching the £10m Venturesome Impact Fund, which will offer affordable loans to social organisations across the UK. Funding was raised from the foundation’s individual donors, businesses and charities.
UK: Community business support organisation Power to Change has published a guide to assist the government to develop a successful “community right to buy” policy. The idea is based on the principle that community groups should be given the right of first refusal (the right to make the first offer on a property for sale before other buyers) for assets that have community value. The paper focuses on amending the Localism Act 2011, which created a “community right to bid” that it says proved inefficient to drive up community ownership and better use of otherwise empty properties. The government should expand the kind of real estate assets that are deemed to have a community value and lengthen the time for which community groups retain their right of first refusal, the guide advises.
Movers and Shakers
- Mark Norbury, CEO of social entrepreneurs support organisation UnLtd, has been announced as the new chair of Acevo, the UK civil society leaders’ group. Watch our Black Cab Interview with Mark.
