2019 In Review
We began 2019 by welcoming the Chicago impact investing community to our seventh annual Showcase, which was sponsored by The MacArthur Foundation. The event featured Julia Stasch, President of The MacArthur Foundation, as the keynote speaker, in addition to several Chicago-based impact fund managers and their portfolio companies. The response again exceeded our expectations, as the event sold-out in record time with over 600 RSVPs. Our next Chicago Impact Investing Showcase is already on the calendar: save the date for March 9th, 2020!
Throughout the year, we continued to deploy capital from our second venture fund. The final closing of Impact Engine Ventures II at $25M was covered by Bloomberg, Chicago Inno, Crain’s, and ImpactAlpha. To date, the fund has made nine investments (CancerIQ, Climb Credit, Fixer, FutureFuel, Glimpse, KickUp, MyVillage, PadSplit, and Plum) and we have invested in new themes within our impact areas, like affordable housing, early childhood education, and alternative education pathways.
Since 2015, across our two venture funds, we have invested in 30 companies, of which 57% are located between the coasts, 50% are led by women CEOs, and 27% are led by non-white CEOs. Within our impact areas, 33% of our portfolio is focused on economic empowerment, 30% on education, 7% environmental sustainability, and 30% on health. We are very proud of the diversity of our portfolio.
We are also very proud of our portfolio companies’ impact and growth, which were recognized through a variety of awards and acknowledgements: ReUp Education earned Innovator of the Year by Education Dive, Rock Health named ConsejoSano as one of its Top 50 in Digital Health 2020, Moving Analytics was selected as one of MedTech Innovator’s 50 Best-in-Class, Workit Health was recognized by the Journal of the American Medical Association, FutureFuel made it on CNBC’s 2019 Upstart 100 list, PadSplit was one of six winners in the Reconstruct Challenge for affordable housing initiatives, and much more.
August 2019 marked the 7th anniversary of our first accelerator investment and we acknowledged the occasion through our August blog post, Impact Engine Turns Seven: A Look Back at Our First Investment. Our blog also featured pieces with our perspective on issues relevant to impact investing, such as “Impact Engine’s Approach to Measuring What Matters”, “Beyond the Label: How to Diligence Impact in Private Equity Funds”, and “Impact Whisperers: The Growing Number of Investors Quietly Transforming Capitalism.” For a compilation of our blog posts, you can visit our website and Medium pages.
We were thrilled to be added to the ImpactAssets 50 this year, an annual list that recognizes experienced, diverse, and reputable impact investors, and we were a founding member and board member of Impact Capital Managers (ICM), which brings together impact-driven private capital fund managers, currently representing over $11B in capital.
2020 will be an exciting year as we support our current portfolio companies’ growth and engage with the community through our events (signup for our next Sector Deep-Dive on January 15th!). We would like to thank all our supporters — investors, entrepreneurs, mentors, service providers, and more — and we wish you a wonderful New Year!
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