Philosophy and Approach

Direct: Private market impact investments are designed to provide a direct and tangible way to create positive change. These investments provide primary financing of projects or businesses that are specifically structured to address pressing social and environmental challenges.

Targeted: Through a combination of market knowledge, multi-layer classification, and due diligence we gain insight into the landscape and prospective investments’ operations, approach and impact effectiveness. Our platform was purposefully built to help clients understand the landscape and select the opportunities that best suit their needs.

Measurable: When allocating capital to private investments centered on environmental or social impact, performance should be measurable across specific impact metrics and financial return metrics over the life of the investment to ensure long-term goals are met. Our team works with sponsors to identify key impact and financial metrics at the outset and monitors progress.

Our platform is structured to separate signal from noise in a diverse and dynamic landscape.

Network: Private market impact is a small but growing niche within broader private markets. Many impact entrepreneurs, investors and sponsors are early stage and the scale of capital required is often a fraction of traditional private investments, meaning the landscape is very broad, diverse and often untested. As this market segment expands with greater access to capital, our ability to create, maintain, and manage a network across the landscape aids our ability to help clients navigate the arena.

Classification: With any broad and diverse marketplace, classification and categorization are critical. Our approach considers multiple lenses through which we view investments. First and foremost, we consider the type of impact targeted and classify according to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals as well as our internal thematic categories. We also classify by investment structure to understand where an investment would fit in an asset allocation, a private equity structure is not the same as private debt or infrastructure.

Diligence: Primary operational due diligence is foundational to any assessment of a private market investment, where, by definition, public security filings do not exist. Before any investment can be added to our platform, our diligence team digs in to assess all aspects of the offering and principals managing the investment to clearly understand the risk/return profile.

Implementation: We leverage our platform to help clients understand the private impact landscape and carefully target investment options that meet impact objectives, risk tolerance, and financial goals. When a client decides to make an investment, we provide guidance on options for custody and where practical, provide ongoing monitoring and reporting covering investment and impact performance.