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☎️ Tomorrow’s Call: Promising plays for shared prosperity. Raising workers’ living standards and increasing their economic mobility can lower the cost of capital for the companies that employ them – and for the asset management firms that lend to such businesses. That’s the shared-prosperity equation driving Lafayette Square, the investment firm launched by Damien Dwin in 2020. Join Dwin, Keepingly’s Daniel Smith, Capitalize Good’s Andrea Levere, and InnSure’s Charlie Sidoti on this week’s Agents of Impact Call to explore strategies for shared prosperity, in conversation with ImpactAlpha’s David Bank and Napoleon Wallace, Wednesday, April 30, at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm London. RSVP today.
In this week’s Open:
- David Bank reports on the surprisingly hopeful mood at Climate Week SF
- Five ‘off the rack’ blended finance models that can be replicated and scaled
- Amy Cortese profiles George Cook of crowdfunder Honeycomb Credit
- Four new podcasts from the ImpactAlpha Podcasting Network
Let’s dig in. – Dennis Price
Must-reads on ImpactAlpha
- Climate tech is counting on falling costs and rising demand to ride out the political storm. A volatile political and economic backdrop helped make San Francisco Climate Week feel less frothy than in recent years. Nonetheless, the prevailing attitude of climate tech founders and funder: “It’s go time,” reports David Bank. Read more.
- Lackluster fundraising for TPG NEXT sends mixed signals to emerging and diverse managers. When TPG raised $500 million for its TPG NEXT fund two years ago, the asset manager’s CEO touted the effort to “bring financial and operational capital support to diverse-led firms.” With the fund raising only $64.5 million in additional capital over the past 24 months, TPG didn’t even issue a press release. Get the story.
- ‘Off the rack’ blended finance: Five models to replicate and scale. A simple two-tranche equity fund structure is among a handful of fund models that could make it easier to unlock and deploy blended finance, especially in emerging markets, according to a new report from British International Investment and BCG. Check out all five, and read a guest post from Leslie Maasdorp of BII and Rich Hutchinson of BCG.
Agents of Impact
💸 George Cook, Honeycomb Credit: Bridging the gap for small business lending
Growing up in rural Pennsylvania, George Cook worked for the family business: a community bank that has been in the family for six generations. In the bank’s branches, Cook did “every job imaginable.” He fell in love with commercial lending, “meeting the entrepreneurs, hearing their stories, and connecting them to the resources they need to take that next step on their journey.”I n 2018, Cook launched Honeycomb Credit, an investment crowdfunding site that enables small businesses to tap retail investors – often their customers, neighbors and followers – for fairly priced loans.Keep reading, “George Cook, Honeycomb Credit: Bridging the gap in small business lending,” by Amy Cortese on ImpactAlpha.
🏃On the move
- IMPACT Community Capital promoted Andrew Zimmerman to managing director of investments.
- Gema Sancho-Minana Bertomeu, a former environmental policy consultant with the Asian Development Bank, joined GAWA Capital as an impact and technical assistance analyst.
- Keepingly’s Daniel Smith and Adventurely’s Mita Carriman launched the Caribbean Venture Collective to support startup founders with ties to the Caribbean.
The Week’s Podcasts
🎧 This Week in Impact: Climate tech is weathering political turbulence. Host Brian Walsh takes up ImpactAlpha’s top stories with editor David Bank. Up this week: How climate tech founders and funders are planning to ride out the political storm. What lackluster fundraising for TPG NEXT means for emerging and diverse managers. Plus, promising pages in the playbook for shared prosperity.
🗺️ The Activest Podcast: The origins of Next World Assets, Part 1. Activest was created in response to police killings and the extractive nature of fines and fees in places like Ferguson, Mo. The Activest spinoff, Next World Assets, was created to answer the question: What if the powers-that-be instead used huge municipal investments to make people’s lives better and easier. Listen now.
🏘️ Community Capital Live: Creating democratic financial infrastructure for local communities. Seed Commons’ Ed Whitfield joins the podcast to share the financial cooperative’s lending process, governance structure and challenges faces in the current political climate. Check it out.
📯 The Criterion Institute Podcast: Reimagining resourcing for social transformation, Part 1. MADRE’s Yifat Susskind joins Joy Anderson to discuss the importance of a “feminist financial imagination” in the context of social transformation and funding for women’s rights organizations. Tune in.
Get in the Game
💼 Step up
- Open Society Institute is hiring an investment associate in New York.
- British International Investment is seeking a climate change manager for a hybrid role in London.
- Conservation International is looking for a senior manager for nature finance in Nairobi.
Dozens of job opportunities are available to subscribers each week on ImpactAlpha’s Career Hub.
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