Transform Finance Investor Network Webinar Recordings

Agriculture has always been a mainstay of impact investing. But what would a more transformative approach to financing a fair future for agriculture look like?

Jen Astone, Executive Director of the Swift Foundation, set out to answer that question as she reviewed Swift’s holdings in agriculture and considered the role of philanthropy, impact investing, and traditional capital in supporting the food system.

On this TFIN webinar, Jen helps us understand the frame of agroecology and the relevance and role of foundations' patient capital in financing a transformative approach, comparing different investments and investable opportunities through this lens.

[These "podcasts" are the direct audio recordings of TFIN Webinars. As the original format was a video webinar, please excuse any brief technical difficulties and note that presenters may refer to slides. To watch the TFIN webinar recordings with their corresponding slide decks, please visit http://transformfinance.org/investor-resources/.]

In the face of exclusion from financial decision-making, marginalized communities (and in particular, communities of color) are taking matters into their own hands by creating community capital funds. Such vehicles, with sufficient community voice in their structure and investment decisions, have the ability to fill capital gaps, capturing the need for financing vetted community businesses. Equally importantly, they can be vehicles for power building.

In this webinar, Nwamaka Agbo of Nwamaka Agbo Consulting details her work at the intersection of power building, community governance, and capital. She then turns to the creation and structure of Democratizing Capital East Bay (DCEB), an Oakland-based community capital fund. Jeff Rosen of the Solidago Foundation then explains the financial mechanism of DCEB and how it compares an earlier iteration, the PVGrows Investment Fund, and other similar vehicles. The discussion focuses on how an integrated capital strategy that catalyzes investors of different risk profiles intersects with the deep mission of the fund.

[These "podcasts" are the direct audio recordings of TFIN Webinars. As the original format was a video webinar, please excuse any brief technical difficulties and note that presenters may refer to slides. To watch the TFIN webinar recordings with their corresponding slide decks, please visit http://transformfinance.org/investor-resources/.]

The first half of 2018 has been quite active at the intersection of finance and social change. From a renewed attention to racial justice and capital, to major asset owners speaking a different language, to new policies initiatives that could cut either way, there hasn't been much of a dull moment.

In this special midyear webinar conversation, the Transform Finance Investor Network details trends and movements we have picked up on, gives an overview of what Transform Finance is working on, and showcases what some of our members are excited about at the moment.

[These "podcasts" are the direct audio recordings of TFIN Webinars. As the original format was a video webinar, please excuse any brief technical difficulties and note that presenters may refer to slides. To watch the TFIN webinar recordings with their corresponding slide decks, please visit http://transformfinance.org/investor-resources/.]

Building on our prior explorations around the intersection of returns and impact, Aner Ben Ami of Candide and Greg Neichin of Ceniarth lead a conversation picking up on our earlier webinar on their approach to impact-led investments versus "responsible asset management" and looking at it in practice with Global Partnerships and One Acre Fund.

Both operating at impressive scale, they have deployed hundreds of millions of dollars in loans. Global Partnerships is now in its 6th debt fund, and has distributed over $280m in loans to about 120 partners in 19 countries. One Acre Fund anticipates working with about 900,000 farmers this year, increasing yields by offering inputs on credit. While they are proving that their beneficiaries are indeed very credit-worthy, they are also adamant that their work should be de-coupled from the idea of a 'market rate' of return. In fact, for One Acre Fund and Global Partnerships, there is an unequivocal trade-off - the higher the return their investors seek, the more limited they are in achieving their impact objectives.

In this webinar, Brian Heese of One Acre Fund and Rick Beckett of Global Partnerships share their strategies and discuss the specific opportunity (or cost) they see by offering a lower (or higher) return to their investors.

[These "podcasts" are the direct audio recordings of TFIN Webinars. As the original format was a video webinar, please excuse any brief technical difficulties and note that presenters may refer to slides. To watch the TFIN webinar recordings with their corresponding slide decks, please visit http://transformfinance.org/investor-resources/.]

Within the massive 2017 tax bill, impact investors are taking notice of a comparatively small new provision. Opportunity Zones provide a new tax benefit for investors in low income communities, but will it also benefit residents of those communities? The provision has raised hopes for some but has others remaining cautious over the new law. Click here to read about Opportunity Zones through a collection of resources.

In this webinar, Fran Seegull and John Cochrane of the U.S. Impact Investing Alliance discuss how the new benefit looks to incentivize capital, the types of business and projects it might promote, and how impact investors can shape this new market for community investment.

[These "podcasts" are the direct audio recordings of TFIN Webinars. As the original format was a video webinar, please excuse any brief technical difficulties and note that presenters may refer to slides. To watch the TFIN webinar recordings with their corresponding slide decks, please visit http://transformfinance.org/investor-resources/.]

The residential solar market has seen impressive growth in recent years, with annual growth rates of over 50% between 2011-2016. However, this growth has not been as inclusive as it should be - most of the solar units are being sold to relatively affluent communities in a small number of states. Low income communities, who spend a disproportionate share of their household income on utility bills, are not getting access to the economic benefits that come with a solar roof and a more efficient home.

PosiGen is a residential solar and energy efficiency provider based in Louisiana that has seen impressive success selling to low- and moderate-income households, with over 11,000 systems to date. They have done this by re-designing the residential model from the ground up, rethinking credit underwriting (no FICO scores), sales strategies, and even system design to fit the needs of these underserved customers. In this webinar, we hear from PosiGen's CEO Tom Neyhart, and get an investor perspective from Aner Ben-Ami (Candide Group) on PosiGen and other efforts to democratize access to clean energy.

[These "podcasts" are the direct audio recordings of TFIN Webinars. As the original format was a video webinar, please excuse any brief technical difficulties and note that presenters may refer to slides. To watch the TFIN webinar recordings with their corresponding slide decks, please visit http://transformfinance.org/investor-resources/.]

The issue of how to exit an impact investment responsibly encapsulates many of the structuring issues we have been discussing through other TFIN webinars and a Transform Finance/Inter-American Development Bank report on alternative financing structures.

In this joint webinar with the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN), we discuss the issue of responsible exits from a variety of angles. Hannah Schiff and Hannah Dithrich of the GIIN's Research Team discuss their recent report on the topic: Lasting Impact: The Need for Responsible Exits. This is followed by a discussion with expert practitioners Anna Kanze of Grassroots Capital Management and Chuck Holt of InvestEco, who discuss their approach to managing investments for continued impact.

[These "podcasts" are the direct audio recordings of TFIN Webinars. As the original format was a video webinar, please excuse any brief technical difficulties and note that presenters may refer to slides. To watch the TFIN webinar recordings with their corresponding slide decks, please visit http://transformfinance.org/investor-resources/.]

A staggering 70 million Americans have a criminal record. Despite a tightening labor market, this forecloses for them - by rule or by discrimination - most employment opportunities, even though stable work is crucial to avoiding recidivism. Research from NELP suggests that removing barriers to employment for people with criminal records has been successful in numerous ways. To address this, several fair chance hiring initiatives have emerged, such as ban-the-box. An especially interesting model to counter exclusion is Open Hiring: the practice of filling jobs without judging applicants or asking any questions. Open Hiring creates mainstream work opportunities and supports individuals in succeeding at those jobs. 

On this webinar we present the Open Hiring model pioneered by Greyston (famous for supplying brownies to Unilever's Ben & Jerry's) over the last 35 years. We will hear from Jonathan Halperin, Head of External Affairs; and Mike Brady, Greyston CEO. Greyston is now looking to fund a new initiative to make Open Hiring a universal practice and support other companies in its adoption.

[These "podcasts" are the direct audio recordings of TFIN Webinars. As the original format was a video webinar, please excuse any brief technical difficulties and note that presenters may refer to slides. To watch the TFIN webinar recordings with their corresponding slide decks, please visit http://transformfinance.org/investor-resources/.]

As part of our inquiry into multi-stakeholder approaches, this webinar explores how Open Book Management can empower workers and increase their well being. Can Open Book Management be one of the cases of "alignment advantage," where the impact case and the business case go hand in hand?

Our guest presenters on this webinar are two certified Open Book Management coaches, Tom Strong, formerly senior program officer at the Hitachi Foundation, which focused on making the business case for investing in front-line, lower-wage workers, and Anne Claire Broughton, an expert in the field of employee engagement who co-founded and led the SJF Institute and authored the Human Capital Advantage curriculum.

[These "podcasts" are the direct audio recordings of TFIN Webinars. As the original format was a video webinar, please excuse any brief technical difficulties and note that presenters may refer to slides. To watch the TFIN webinar recordings with their corresponding slide decks, please visit http://transformfinance.org/investor-resources/.]

We recently examined how a family office can approach the risk / return / impact continuum across its entire portfolio. Building on that conversation, we explore how a foundation's renewed effort at understanding and driving its impact led it to focus on place-based innovation.

In this webinar, we hear how Gary Community Investments (GCI) uses its newly minted tool, the Transformative Impact Grid(TIGR) to supercharge its allocations. Matt Barry and Luis Duarte from CGI will discuss the genesis of TIGR, how it supports more deep-impact investments, how it spawned an in-house innovation hub and led to a revamped innovation strategy with three components aimed singly at supporting the well-being of Colorado's low-income children and their families.

[These "podcasts" are the direct audio recordings of TFIN Webinars. As the original format was a video webinar, please excuse any brief technical difficulties and note that presenters may refer to slides. To watch the TFIN webinar recordings with their corresponding slide decks, please visit http://transformfinance.org/investor-resources/.]