The Impact World this Week: 17 October 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 featuring Sir Ronald Cohen, an overview of the world’s impact investment wholesalers and new European research from the Euclid Network.
Global: 2024 marks the beginning of the “era of impact accounting”, according to Sir Ronald Cohen. The social investment pioneer was speaking at SpainNAB’s fifth annual conference in Madrid on Monday as the International Foundation for Valuing Impacts launched its ‘interim environmental methodologies’ – accounting resources for companies and investors to measure and value in monetary terms their environmental impacts tailored for 268 different countries and regions. “The measurement of impact was once thought to be impossible,” said Cohen. “Once investors can see the difference between the impact performance of leaders and laggards, the money will flow to those that do the best job of optimising risk, return and impact,” he said. “This meeting in Madrid today is a historic one; it is at the watershed between the old economic system of risk and return, and the new economic system of risk, return and impact.”
- Read more: Sir Ronald Cohen: ‘Transparency is going to disrupt companies delivering negative impacts’
Global: There are 19 impact investment wholesalers either active or in development around the world, including the UK’s Better Society Capital, Canada’s Social Finance Fund and Korea’s Social Value and Solidarity Foundation, together managing more than US$3bn, according to a report published this week by GSG Impact. Impact investment wholesalers provide capital to intermediary impact funds, helping them to attract more private investment to invest in social enterprises and mission-driven businesses. The study, Impact Investment Wholesalers and Fund of Funds: Design Insights from the GSG Impact Partnership draws on the experience of GSG Impact’s national partners across Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America. The report demonstrates how existing wholesalers have helped grow the impact investment market in their countries or regions, and outlines different models (looking at financial structure, governance, funding source and others), with an aim to help other countries to develop similar structures.
Austria: Austrian social enterprises are resilient in times of crisis, reveals the second edition of the Austrian Social Enterprise Monitor 2023-2024, published by Vienna University and the Euclid Network. Of the social enterprises surveyed for the first edition in 2022, 95% are still active. The report also shows Austrian social enterprises tend to be young, with 48% founded within the past ten years, and it estimates they create between 34,000 and 93,000 jobs. Just over half are led by women, 44% employ people with disabilities and 38% employ people from ethnic minorities.
Movers and shakers
- Pierre Harkay is the new CEO of Impact Finance Belgium. He joins from BIO Invest, the Belgian Investment Company for Developing Countries, where he was development and sustainability manager. He will succeed Frederik van den Bosch, the first CEO of the organisation since 2023.
- Patrick Graham has been appointed as a non-executive director for Big Issue Changing Lives CIC. He will focus on Big Issue Recruit, an initiative dedicated to supporting people who face barriers to joining the workforce into sustainable employment.
- Power to Change has appointed new trustees to its board: Claire Spencer, currently head of policy and programmes at the Future Governance Forum think tank; Daniel Hill, who has a background in inclusive regeneration, affordable housing and just transition policy; and Fin Irwin, founder of intoBodmin, a community interest company dedicated to revitalising the Cornish town of Bodmin.
