A series to challenge your thinking
We need to talk about Impact…
Impact Investment Provocations
According to the Global Impact Investing Network, Impact Investment refers to investments made to intentionally generate positive, measurable social and environmental impact alongside financial return.
In Australia the field has been growing slowly over the past three decades and is now the subject of a Federal Government Taskforce.
The taskforce recently released an interim report highlighting how impact investment could harness much needed capital to counter poor outcomes and foster transformative opportunities in disparate fields and places.
Yes. It can.
But it will need to evolve.
Impact Investment needs to extend beyond prevailing financial paradigms
In order to realise this potential, the field needs to expand, deepen and evolve to deliver transformational impacts for people and places rather than simply becoming an extension of prevailing financial paradigms and practices. The social and economic context created by the current pandemic makes this shift more urgent, as we will be required to unlock regeneration and new capacity within our systems while working with considerable fiscal constraints.
As Hilary Cottam outlines in this Exponential View podcast:
Since the 70’s, we haven’t had reform of [public] systems, we’ve had a marketisation of them… and with that has come a risk mindset — instead of looking for possibility we begin with controlling risk.
To date, we contend that in Australia, the focus has been too much on a transactional approach to impact investment.
Here we share a series of seven provocations which we hope will promote dialogue, and contribute to new thinking about the potential for transformational impact investment in Australia, New Zealand and the wider Asia Pacific region.
Our core purpose in this series is to ask some of the hard questions to interrogate how we can reshape impact investment to ensure that we are actually transforming outcomes for people, places and the planet.
Over the course of seven blog posts, released weekly, we will traverse some of the core opportunities we see for impact investment:
1. Impact Investment needs to stretch horizontally and vertically. The first post focuses on the emerging field of equity crowdfunding, and the role this could play in provoking dialogue across impact investment about ownership and transfer of wealth.
2. Sleeping giants: Generating impact in Place through anchor investment. This provocation moves from a grass-roots focus to a structural approach to transformation in impact investment. We explore how anchor collaboratives could provoke a deeper and much more engaged future for place-based impact investment.
3. The Missing Middle is still missing. Here we challenge the focus of impact investment to ask if this form of capital is right for the sorts of impact areas that require finance and new forms of capital.
4. Patience is of Value not just a Virtue. In this post we evoke a conversation about the time transformation takes, and propose a space for patient capital, intergenerational impacts and a different conversation about investment exits.
5. Blending more than investment and impact. There are a plethora of opportunities for blending mechanisms, capital forms, investment returns and sectoral contributions that could contribute to a more transformative agenda for impact investment. In this provocation we explore some potential opportunities for significant impacts.
6. Safeguarding purpose will require continuous innovation. Perhaps the biggest threat to transformative agendas in impact investment is the assimilation of purpose as an ‘add-on’ to mainstream investment agendas (add impact and stir). This post examines what we could do to facilitate a new paradigm for impact finance and safeguard purpose over time.
7. Scaling ambition to achieve our mission. In this final discussion we look at scale from another perspective and ask what the ‘impact’ moon shot is for the next generation of impact investors and what it would take to achieve such a mission (not just finance it!).
We are at a critical moment in time where more impact-led innovation is needed and more people and organisations are open to change — if you’re interested in developing any of these ideas with us get in contact YC@griffith.edu.au
Read Provocation 1: Impact Investment needs to stretch horizontally and vertically
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Professor Ingrid Burkett
Co-director The Yunus Centre, Griffith University
Ingrid is a social designer, designing processes, products and knowledge that deepen social impact and facilitate social innovation. She has contributed to the design of policy and processes in a diversity of fields, including community development, local economic development, disability, procurement and social investment.
Professor of Practice
Alex Hannant
Co-director The Yunus Centre, Griffith University
Alex has a background in capacity building, partnership brokering and social innovation. He has broad international experience, working in a range of fields including poverty alleviation, sustainability, climate change, education, social enterprise, and impact investment.
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