2018 Rocky Mountain Who’s Who in Impact Investing
The 2nd annual Rocky Mountain edition, published as sponsored content in the Denver Business Journal, November 2018. Honorees were celebrated at the 2nd Annual Rocky Mountain Who’s Who in Impact Investing Awards on November 8, 2018.
View the original edition on the Denver Business Journal
Letter from the Founder
As the Founder and Executive Director of Impact Finance Center, CO Impact Days, and CO Impact Investing Education Institute, it is my pleasure to welcome you to the 2nd Annual 2018 Rocky Mountain Who’s Who in Impact Investing Special Issue.
Just as accelerators such as TechStars or 500 Startups identify, educate, and invest in entrepreneurs, Impact Finance Center is an accelerator for the individuals and organizations, where we identify, educate, and activate early adopters who want to become impact investors. IFC was founded in 2012 and is a multi-university nonprofit academic center. Founded in 2015, IFC’s flagship initiative, CO Impact Days and CO Impact Investing Education Institute, is a three-year effort to catalyze $100M of investment in social ventures and is the first-ever statewide marketplace for impact investing and Phase 1 of the National Impact Investing Marketplace. Since inception, we completed over 170 presentations and courses to over 5,000 participants. As part of CO Impact Education Institute, CO Impact Days 2016 and 2017 together showcased more than 150 social ventures, connecting them to mentors, partners, and impact investment capital. Early estimates indicate that 258 direct impact investments of $201M have been completed, in addition to upgrading the governance of several asset owners.
How do we sustain this work and scale it? Our strategy is simple. First, we need to grow more impact investors faster and more efficiently, and secondly, we need to create a self-sustaining financial model for Impact Days. We plan to achieve this by launching Impact Investing Giving Circles and developing an edtech social enterprise, Impact Investing Education Institute. Please reach out to us if you want to support us with your words, wealth, or wisdom on our journey to create a social enterprise that will provide recurring earned revenue that will continue to support this great work we have all started.
We are learning so much from the successful impact investors and social ventures partnering to catalyze positive growth in Colorado’s most vulnerable communities. This work would not have been possible without the amazing support from over 100 foundations, investors, and philanthropists, including our leading supporters Zoma Foundation, The Anschutz Foundation, The Piton Foundation at Gary Community Investments, Colorado Health Foundation, and MacArthur Foundation.
Congratulations to those here who are at the forefront of the impact investing movement proving that it can be done.
Dr. Stephanie Gripne, Impact Finance Center & CO Impact Days
The 2018 Honorees (101)
Banks Benitez
Jacqui Dietrich
Rebecca Gorrell
Dave Harris
Gregory Anton
Timothy Woods
Betty Arkell
Bruce Campbell
Karen Schauble Leaffer
Rick Jordan
Tricia Meyer
Jennifer Oertel
Chintan Panchal
Elizabeth Prendergast
Dominick Sekich
Ivan Frishberg
Susan Graf
Ramsay Huntley
Blake Jones
Kirk Monroe
Matt Teeters
Brian Burke
Mike O’Donnell
Ceyl Prinster
Sally Boulter
Ed Briscoe
Ella Fahrlander
Renee Ferrufino
Tim Freundlich
Kate Krebs-Lyda
Elaine Martyn
Deb Nelson
Todd Appel
Jed Emerson
Alexandra LaForge
John O’Halloran
Scott Rehmus
Cindy Willard
Ashley Grosh
Andrew McGregor
Marcia Nelson
Melanie Pease Davidson
Gregg Bagni
Molly Chafetz
Robert Fenwick-Smith
Ron Gonen
Craig Jonas
Ryan Kirkpatrick
Ravi Malhotra
Rich Maloy
Alicia Robb
Zach Strom
Akasha Absher
Scott Arnold
Sara Boyd
Steven Ellis
Shelley Ford
Kristin Hull
Debbie Huttner
Jennifer Kenning
Will Morgan
Kimberley C. Paris
Katherine Pease
Wendy Dominguez
Casey Verbeck
Matthew Weatherley-White
David Wolf
Megan Dunbar
Cliff Feigenbaum
Anne Field
Dennis Price
Devin Thorpe
Anne Haines
Rob Smith
Matthew Barry
Ben L. Bynum
Luis Duarte
Janice Fritsch
Thomas Gougeon
Bart Holaday
Rich Hoops
Mariah McPherson
Kristi Petrie
Tony Rosendo
Sharon Schneider
Tracey Stewart
Kim Coupounas
Nicole Bagley
Maria Fabula
Andrew Currie
Alexander Golding
Joanne Kelley
Rob Kellogg
Praful Shah
Meredith Parfet
Leigh Whelpton
Emily Winslow
Doug Spencer
Alexandria Wise
Jenna Walker
Stephanie J. Wilson
Case Study
The AJL Charitable Foundation and Impact Finance Center
The AJL Charitable Foundation (AJL) seeks to help at-risk Colorado youth and families. AJL recognizes that to increase impact and better serve more Colorado youth and families, the foundation has a responsibility to align its portfolio and investments more closely with its mission and prioritize both social impact and financial returns. AJL is a $15 million perpetual private foundation.
Awareness
The Board of Directors and Executive Director shared a sense of responsibility in incorporating impact investing into the Foundation’s investment portfolio. AJL joined the Colorado Association of Funders’ Impact Investing Group, through which they learned about socially responsible investing, direct impact investments, and program-related investments.
Education
Pursuing additional knowledge, AJL attended CO Impact Days 2017, a place-based impact investing educational opportunity and social venture marketplace produced by Impact Finance Center (IFC). There, they participated in Investment Beliefs, a workshop offered by IFC Senior Advisor John O’Halloran. The workshop covered governance best practices including Investment Beliefs, decision-based attribution evaluation, goal-based planning, and evaluating the investment advisor every five years by going out to market.
Questioning the capacity of AJL’s investment advisor to move the foundation along the continuum of impact investing, AJL followed up with IFC and were convinced that AJL needed a formal review of their Investment Beliefs. A consensus Investment Beliefs Statement, which integrates into the Investment Policy Statement, is needed to serve as a clear communication to existing and future investment advisors.
Action
AJL retained IFC to guide its Board through a process to review their existing Investment Beliefs. IFC surveyed the Board to assess individual assumptions and values and found that each member was at a different place in their understanding about investment fundamentals around financial markets, investment process, organizational factors, and impact. The survey highlighted a need for more education on critical investment beliefs. To resolve such differences, IFC provided additional education and facilitation to move the Board to consensus.
With Investment Beliefs finalized, IFC provided the Investment Beliefs Statement to AJL, who then incorporated it into their existing Investment Policy Statement. Guided by the new Investment Policy Statement, AJL and IFC met with AJL’s investment advisor and identified a mismatch between its new impact investing strategy and the tools AJL’s advisor offered.
Ultimately, AJL’s Board decided that a new advisor, mission-aligned through values and experience, was critical to scaling impact for Colorado youth and families. Now, with a strong Investment Beliefs Statement integrated into the Investment Policy Statement, AJL seeks the right investment advisor through an Expression of Interest, closing on November 10. AJL also recently started their direct investing journey and just completed its first loan to a nonprofit, a program related investment to CASA, who serves the foster care population of the 7th Judicial District in Montrose, CO to support a resource center both for CASA and partner organizations. This resource center serves as a social enterprise for CASA providing recurring revenue and allows them to explore additional social enterprises.
Learn more at https://www.ajlfoundation.org/
Impact Investing Giving Circles
Impact Investing Giving Circles: A New Tool to Support First Direct Investments
How do we identify, educate, and activate philanthropists and investors to become impact investors? We reduce the barriers to entry and create opportunities for them to take low-cost, first safe steps and to learn by doing.
For example, have you always been curious about learning how to invest directly in social ventures that include projects, nonprofits, small businesses, cooperatives, startups, and funds? What if you could make your first 3-5 direct impact investments for less than a $5,000 tax-deductible donation with your peers where you could bring your favorite social ventures to be considered while supporting your local community foundation? IFC is piloting a new tool, an Impact Investing Giving Circle (IIGC) to provide such opportunities.
For example, how many individuals and organizations care about supporting social ventures led by and benefiting women in Colorado? Let’s find out. IFC is partnering with the Women’s Council of the Commons on Champa and Denver Downtown Partnership and Women’s Foundation of Colorado to launch a Women’s Impact Investing Giving Circle. We plan to identify 20-100 individuals and organizations who will donate up to $5,000 into a pooled donor-advised fund and meet 4-6 times a year. The IIGC will be social, fun, IFC will teach 44 strategies to align your entire investment portfolio for women. IFC will offer courses such as a women’s small business & impact investing course, a women nonprofit & impact investing course, and a women startups and impact investing course. Next, IFC will launch a “Call for Women Social Ventures.” The IIGC of up to $500,000 will be used to “support” social ventures through loans and equity investments. Unlike other giving circles, there is a small chance that some of the money will come back to the donor advised fund. If it does, we will recycle it and support additional social ventures. As illustrated in the in the figure, if 100 donors donate $5,000 each, then $500,000 can be used to both identify $50M of social ventures and support 10-20 social ventures. IFC is piloting three Impact Investing Giving Circles in the following areas: 1) Women, 2) Environment and Health - UN Sustainable Development Goals, 3) Workforce, Education, and Early Childhood. If you want to join one of these three IIGC’s or launch another Impact Investing Giving Circle, please contact IFC at info@impactfinancecenter.org or join us November 29th for first Impact Investing Giving Circle event!