Impact Investing: Transforming How We Make Money While Making a Difference

Praise for IMPACT INVESTING

“My experience with eBay demonstrated that you can do well by doing good. Impact Investing explores this important idea and provides many examples of the social impact that a for-profit business can ignite.”
—Pierre Omidyar, founder and chairman, eBay; founding partner, Omidyar Network

“An informative and perceptive insight into the world of impact investment.”
—Ronald Cohen, cofounder, Apax Partners; chairman, the Portland Trust and Bridges Ventures

“In business schools around the world, impact investing is hot. For all those young professionals and their teachers, Bugg-Levine and Emerson, pioneers of the field, have written a great introduction to the realities of using markets to address society’s problems.”
—Michael Chu, professor, Harvard Business School; cofounder, IGNIA Fund

“An insightful, compelling, and highly readable road map for investors and their wealth managers seeking to achieve blended value. As global thought leaders in impact investing, Bugg-Levine and Emerson share their perspectives and real-life examples of investors and investments achieving a combination of financial and social/environmental returns. It’s a must-read for anyone interested in how investment can tackle the world’s toughest problems.”
—Ron D. Cordes, cochairman, Genworth Financial Wealth Management; coauthor, The Art of Investing and Portfolio Management

“Impact investing just might be the game-changer we need in the quest to end poverty. Building on the forces of socially responsible investment, microfinance, and many others, impact investing shows that we can solve many of the world’s social problems while making attractive financial returns. This superb book is a clear and compelling guide to any reader who wants to be a part of this powerful new force in development. The book is fresh and accessible, with an eye for metaphor and self-deprecation that is rare and welcome among policy wonks.”
—Elizabeth Littlefield, president and CEO, Overseas Private Investment Corporation; former CEO, CGAP

This groundbreaking book charts the path of a new industry, explaining how impact investing is and can be a positive disruptive force. Impact Investing affirms that it is possible and desirable to address social and environmental problems with investments that generate financial profits.

Antony Bugg-Levine and Jed Emerson reveal how impact investing is a transformational vehicle for delivering blended value through investment. The authors―two leaders in the burgeoning field of impact investing―give a name to a set of activities previously siloed in enclaves and reveal how these activities are linked within what is becoming a new and dynamic field.

The authors don’t take a normative approach to argue how investors should behave but instead show how entrepreneurial people and institutions are already offering an integrated alternative. Impact Investing defines this emerging industry for all the institutions and people it is affecting (investors, funders, social entrepreneurs, educators, policy makers, and marginalized communities) and showcases illustrative examples of challenges and successes. The book also explores the potential that impact investing holds to tackle the most critical social and environmental issues of our day on a scale never seen before.

Ultimately, Impact Investing offers a fundamentally optimistic vision. This unifying vision illuminates what can be achieved when we capture total blended value, when all our assets work in unison with our values and beliefs.