What to Watch This Week: Case Foundation’s Impact Investing Network Map demo

Walk through this innovative tool with a webinar recording from The Case Foundation

StartingUpGood
Jul 27, 2017 · 6 min read

For the past 2 years, The Case Foundation, a leader in the Impact Investing field, has been hard at work developing the Impact Investing Network Map, a comprehensive tool to visualize publicly available impact investing transactions connecting investors and companies. On July 12th, Rehana Nathoo The Case Foundation’s VP of Social Innovation— led a live demonstration of the Impact Investing Network Map, a first look at the current Beta version of the map.

What Is the Impact Investing Network Map?

Ms. Nathoo described the Impact Investing Network Map in her recent SOCAP guest post:

Over the last two years, we’ve been working to design a data-driven visualization of impact investing transactions to-date. This easy-to-use tool intends to provide current and potential investors, intermediaries and social entrepreneurs a snapshot of what the impact investing market represents, searchable by geography, asset class and impact objective. By bringing the connections between actors to life — looking specifically at the investments that connect them — we can foster a better understanding of the size, breadth, depth, and, importantly, the enormous potential of the impact investing field.

The Network Map is a tool that showcases publicly available data on historical impact investment transactions to help depict what the ecosystem truly looks like. It seeks to expand the impact investing sector through increased transparency and effective collaboration. By revealing where the gaps in completeness and accuracy of available data are, the Network Map’s developers hope to highlight where the sector needs to improve disclosure practices.

From Ms. Nathoo’s June blog post:

But that vision is part of a deeper desire to change behavior. We hope that the Network Map will spur investors to publicly share investment data and make transparency a hallmark of the Impact Investing sector. We firmly believe increased sharing of data and better mapping of the ecosystem will result in more robust activity from investors and entrepreneurs. Only with data that is both in-depth and accurate will a wider cross section of actors engage, and that is key to propelling the Impact Investing movement to tipping point.

What the Network Map is Not

  • A Due Diligence Tool. It is an informational aid, and users are encouraged to verify information through the live links to original sources that are included in the Network Map wherever possible.
  • A Deal Matching or Making Service. It only includes historical information about closed and completed transactions.

Where Does the Network Map’s Data Come From?

Data for the Network Map is primarily sourced through project partner ImpactSpace. ImpactSpace is an open data platform that provides stories and data to anyone interested in generating financial returns through the creation of environmental and social value.

ImpactSpace obtains this data by scraping press releases, searching websites and reviewing investor portfolios. It also encourages companies and investors to submit their deal information directly through its website (more on the importance of proactively submitting data below). Crunch Base is also a partner in this project and the secondary source of deal data.

How does the Network Map work?

With the philosophy of “if you build it, they will come”, the Case Foundation talked to many key players (wealth advisors, asset managers, family offices, individual investors and intermediaries) to create the infrastructure that would be most valuable to them.

In the live demonstration, Ms. Nathoo deliberately walked through the functionality included in the Beta version of the Network Map, beginning with Explore the Network Map. The Network Map depicts the interconnected relationships between companies (green dots), investors (blue dots) and completed transactions (gray lines). “Companies” are defined as all organizations with a social purpose (for-profit and nonprofit) that intend to raise capital. “Investors” are all investing organizations including capital providers, channel providers and intermediaries.

Users can search by specific company or by using filters. Filter choices include:

  • Impact objectives (primarily gleaned from the IRIS taxonomy for standardization)
  • Industry (for users not as familiar with impact investing who are looking for more traditional classifications)
  • Geography (by country)
  • Fundraising Round
  • Legal Structures (since new ways of organizing companies may attract new types of capitals with various objectives)
  • Certifications (such as B Corp)
  • Mechanism (i.e. Program Related Investments, Mission Related Investments or prize money)
  • Vehicles (like through grants or equity)

The Company Overview briefly describes the organization with external links wherever possible. Investor Overviews display the same types of information for investors — based on what is publicly available — to give investors a better understanding of their peers.The Funding Detail view for companies and investors provides whatever information about completed transactions that the developers have been able to obtain.

The Insights section of the tool was designed, with the help of the University of Chicago, to offer real time analytics. It only pulls from the Network Map’s current samples, so the insights provided are impacted by the quantity and quality of data included. But there is great potential to determine trends and growth/interest patterns once the Network Map is more populated. This is why the developers are encouraging all actors to share information, however limited. Even just disclosing an investor’s name is helpful.

In the Q&A portion of the webinar, Ms. Nathoo alluded to functionality that may be added it future iterations of the tool — including more precise geographic filtering (by U.S. state, for example), showcasing exit and financial performance related results, and deriving trends as more longitudinal data is collected over time.

Who can be part of the Network Map?

The Network Map’s developers are eager to obtain as much data as possible. When questions were asked about what data would be included, the answer usually sounded something like “when in doubt, submit it”. (Users can even bulk upload data to the ImpactSpace website.)

Who should submit data?

  • Nonprofits
  • Traditional Venture Capital firms even if most of their deals aren’t impact investments
  • Intermediaries
  • Angel and individual investors
  • Foundations that have grants and PRIs tagged as impact investments
  • Recipients of impact capital

Anyone with large or small amounts of data can help make the Network Map more robust.

What’s Next?

Reiterating that the Network Map is only as strong as the data it holds, Ms. Nathoo closed with a call to action that echoed Jean Case’s request to share data in her recent SSIR article.

  • #ShareYourData. Visit data partner, ImpactSpace, to submit your data.
  • Spread the word. Share this call to action with your network and encourage others to join the movement.
  • Be a part of early testing. Stay informed by signing up and volunteering to be a data provider, beta tester, or interested changemaker.

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