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GSG GLOBAL NEWS

• Sir Ronald Cohen and UNDP’s Ulrika Modeer, signed a cooperation agreement between GSG and SDG Impact, a UNDP initiative to accelerate progress towards the SDGs through SDG Assurance Standards that provide guidance to investors and enterprises on how to contribute to the SDGs.
• GSG celebrated global Impact heroes through its annual Impact Honors awards. The 2019 winners were Tarun Mehta, Ather Energy – GSG Millennial Entrepreneur, Dr. Consulta – GSG Impact Entrepreneur, PGGM – GSG Impact Institutional Investor, Zurich Insurance Group – GSG Impact Asset Owner, Sonen Capital – GSG Impact Asset Manager and the City of Buenos Aires – GSG Impact Market Builder.
• The GSG Impact Summit 2019 was 100% carbon compensated with 1020 tCO2e offset against reforestation in the Great Rift Valley, Kenya, as well as to help protect the Amazon Rainforest. More details
• Sir Ronald Cohen, along with Giovanna Melandri, Chair, Italy NAB, met Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte to present an extensive document about the global social impact finance movement, proposing the Outcomes Fund model. Sir Cohen also met EU Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni and the Italian Minister of Economic Affairs Roberto Gualtier in bilateral meetings. More details
• The GSG welcomed 4 new National Advisory Boards (NABs) and a Regional Advisory Board (RAB) into its network at the summit. These are Central America (RAB), Colombia, Ghana, Sweden and Zambia (NABs).

ARGENTINA & URUGUAY

• BIOVALOR, a project of the Uruguayan government, conducted the Circular Opportunities Program 2019. The objective of the program is to validate ideas, and to implement prototypes and projects that promote a transition towards the circular economy. 74 such ideas were proposed with 20 of these receiving financial awards for further development.
• 130 Social Entrepreneurs across 3 cities in Uruguay, received training on Measurement Tools for Impact Investment, to help them measure the impact they are creating and to communicate the impact across relevant stakeholders.
• The Uruguay taskforce together with the British Embassy welcomed Cliff Prior, CEO - Big Society Capital to deliver talks on the changes required to grow the local impact investment ecosystem. A meeting for 40 policy makers, from the current and upcoming government and Private investors, was followed by a conference on Channeling private investment for social welfare, for 130 attendees.

CANADA

• The Government of Canada has launched the Equality Fund, a leading $300M CAD gender-lens investing and grant initiative to support women’s rights organizations and the feminist movement.
• Another major tenet in the strategy is to create a $755M CAD wholesale fund to leverage private capital, which is currently being designed. Complementing the fund is a $50M Investment Readiness Program to provide capacity grants and technical assistance to entities looking for investment capital down the road, which has now launched. 

CENTRAL AMERICA

• 22 organizations from 6 countries in Central America came together to form the Regional Advisory Board for Central America (RABCA). The initiative is a successful example of how to integrate the vision and perspectives of different countries, and sectors in a collaborative process to strengthen the impact investment ecosystem.
• The Impact Investment Ecosystem in Central America Report was released by the Regional Advisory Board for Central America (RABCA) under the umbrella of the GSG. It offers a practical guide to inform the RABCA’s strategic decision-making, enabling it to explore the opportunities in Central America to foster a regional impact investment ecosystem.
• Latin American Impact Investment Forum, Central America and the Caribbean (FLII CA&C) was successfully organized in Antigua, Guatemala in November 2019. The event welcomed 718 participants from 32 countries including attendees from 191 impact organizations and 52 investment funds.

MEXICO

• Universidad Autónoma de Mexico – UNAM, the largest public university in LATAM joined the Mexican NAB along with Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey – ITESM, the most innovation-oriented private university in Mexico.
• Consejo Consultivo de Finanzas Verdes, a leading organisation focused on funding of projects and investment assets with positive environmental impact, joined the Mexican NAB.
• Ethos Laboratory of Public Policy, in collaboration with Alliance through Investments for Impact in Mexico (AIIMX), presented the study Payment for Results: From Promise to Reality, where fifteen cases of payment for results in eight countries in Latin America and the Caribbean were analyzed.

USA

• The U.S. Impact Investing Alliance celebrated the launch of the Tipping Point Fund (“TPF”), a $12.5 million donor collaborative vehicle incubated by the Presidents’ Council on Impact Investing to support critical market infrastructure. The TPF launched with nine funders, including Blue Haven Initiative, Ford Foundation, MacArthur Foundation and Omidyar Network.
• The U.S. Treasury Department released the final Opportunity Zones regulations in December. While the regulations provide more clarity to investors, they fail to address transparency and accountability through meaningful reporting requirements. Concurrently, some Members of Congress have introduced bills to reform the policy that could see legislative action next year.
• The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission proposed rules to change the proxy and shareholder proposal processes, which will stifle shareholders’ ability to hold corporations accountable on issues like climate change. The U.S. Impact Investing Alliance and others in the community will submit comments opposing the changes early next year.
• Toniic released the 2019 “T100: Powered Ascent” report, looking at how impact investors are addressing the SDGs. This longitudinal study of 76 deep impact portfolios reveals that SDG 11 – Sustainable Cities and Communities – is the top T100 investment target, with significant activity in community empowerment, green building and affordable housing.

EUROPEAN UNION

• Under the Finnish presidency, the EU adopted Council Conclusions on the Economy of Well-being, underscoring the role of investments for activating education, health, social protection and gender equality, as the key elements of societal well-being and prosperity going beyond GDP. In this spirit, a number of new initiatives for social inclusion, social economy, innovation and sustainable investments are being prepared under the ambitions of the new Commission in its 2019-2024 mandate.
• In Oct 2019, the European Investment Fund launched the EUR 200m EaSI Funded Instrument, including contributions from the EU, the EIF and the EIB. The new EaSI Funded Instrument aims to improve access to finance for micro-enterprises and social enterprises, in line with the objectives of the EaSI Programme; it will provide senior and subordinated loans to financial intermediaries, to increase their lending capacity towards micro-enterprises and social enterprises, as well as to mobilize their own resources, to create jobs and support social inclusion.

FINLAND

• At the start of 2020, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment (MEAE) will establish a Centre of Expertise for Impact Investing that will continue the work of Sitra on the development of effective procurements and the SIB model in Finland. More details
• A new study investigating attitudes towards impact investing among Finnish venture capital and private equity investors, shows that old beliefs, equating impact investments with a compromise on returns, are now changing and Finnish investors are considering impact as a key decision maker. More findings from the study are available here.

FRANCE

• Sir Ronald Cohen visited Paris on December 12 and had the opportunity to meet the members of France Invest, a private equity investors’ association, along with High Commissioner Christophe Itier. The creation of a  national center for impact investing is proposed by Christophe Itier for 2020.
• In September, the SIB working group mandated by the High-Commissioner, Christophe Itier, released a toolkit-report to implement and scale SIBs in France. A €30M outcome-payment fund, focused on housing, employment and the circular economy was announced for early 2020.
• On the occasion of the GSG summit in Buenos Aires, Christophe Itier, High-Commissioner for Social and Solidarity Economy and Social Innovation, announced that France is a candidate to host the GSG summit in 2021.

GERMANY

• On 28 November 2019, the Bundesinitiative Impact Investing representing Germany as a member in the GSG, launched a roadshow across several German cities. These events will serve as platforms for discussing the status of the German impact investing ecosystem. Next spring a new market survey will be published.
• SDG Investments, a Frankfurt based finance-platform, is currently structuring a bond for the rental business of FRAMO, one of the leading truck electrifiers in Europe. Lorries consume up to 100 litres of diesel for every 100km in urban traffic, and battery-powered trucks can help address the issue.   

• The Social Impact Outlook 2019, a market sizing study on Impact Investing developed by Tiresia – Polimi, was released.  The report estimated the Italian impact investing market around EUR 8 billion.
• In October, a working team composed of universities, philanthropic and financial institutions as well as the Italian stock exchange company has been set up with the aim of creating a regulated exchange facility where the transactions are based on the social impact value of the listed companies. More details
• Torino Social Impact, the territorial ecosystem for social entrepreneurship and impact finance has launched a program aimed at promoting innovative forms of procurement, within both public and private companies, in order to increase social impact. More details

PORTUGAL

• Blue Bio Accelerator hosted an investor demo day where 15 ventures engaged with more than 100 investors, entrepreneurs and corporations. Blue Bio Value Accelerator is a capacity-building programme promoted by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Blue Ocean Foundation that supports innovative solutions related to the blue bioeconomy. Meet the ventures here.
• Portugal Inovação Social (the impact investment catalyst institution) and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation co-promoted an event to showcase existing Impact Bonds as well as the pipeline of new Impact Bonds under development. The event targeted investors with the aim of mobilizing more capital towards outcomes-based mechanisms in Portugal.

SPAIN

• Invited by the Spanish Government, the Spain NAB, including Foro Impacto, UnLtd Spain, Open Value Foundation, Gawa Capital, Ship2b foundation and the Creas fund, participated at the 2019 UN Climate Change Conference – COP25 - held in Madrid. Sessions included Impact Investment with Climate Focus in the Blue Zone restricted to official delegations and a Keynote presentation with the artist Eyal Gever.
• Sir Ronald´s Cohen book, On Impact, translated to Spanish as Sobre el Impacto, was shared at the COP25 summit and within the spanish government by the High Commissioner for Agenda 2030.
• Huruma Fund EuSEF, the first Spanish impact investing fund with a blended finance structure including a first-loss tranche, a concessional debt tranche and a technical assistance facility, was launched by GAWA Capital. Huruma, an expected €120 million fund, aims to increase smallholder access to financing by investing in rural/agriculture-focused financial institutions.
• Robeco has added new impact investing solutions to its impact investing platform, which previously included the proprietary Environmental Impact Monitoring tool, to help quantify, communicate, and optimize the environmental impact of listed equity and corporate bond portfolios.

UK

• The Impact Investing Institute, an independent, non-profit organisation which aims to accelerate the growth and improve the effectiveness of the impact investing market, was officially launched in November with events in Sheffield and London.
• Sarah Gordon, CEO Impact Investing Institute, wrote an article, Impact investing is about more than saving the world, for the Financial Times. The piece argues that companies seeking to promote sustainability deliver better returns over the long term.
• The Impact Investing Institute, in association with Deloitte and a series of corporations, investors and technology providers,  published a new paper on Technology Enabled Impact Reporting Practice Across the Investment Chain, which examines what, why and how companies report, and proposes a set of recommendations to guide future practice.

 ISRAEL

• The Israel NAB marked a year of impact investment milestones with the release of an infographic detailing key achievements by ecosystem players over the past year. 
• Startup Nation Central’s ‘Finder.SDG’, a tool to help impact investors find relevant Israeli tech companies that align to the SDGs, with greater precision, will be launched in January 2020. It will highlight around 500 innovative Israeli companies that have been identified as addressing the UN SDGs.
• The Global Impact Tech Alliance (GITA), which aims to position itself as a global authority on impact tech, providing market insight, resources and expertise on impact measurement and management, will also be launched this month.

 ZAMBIA

• Following almost a year of preparations which included the mapping of the local impact investment ecosystem, the Zambia NABII formally joined the GSG. The launch of the NABII comes at a critical time when the country needs more impact capital to achieve the 2030 SDGs and finance its 7th National Development Plan.
• The NABII will work towards developing the nascent impact investment ecosystem by: working with relevant stakeholders to develop a pipeline of impact investment ready businesses, deepening impact investing awareness among stakeholders, facilitating a study to interrogate adequacy of policy and regulatory environment for impact investment, and facilitating the creation of a fund of funds.

AUSTRALIA

• The Australian Sustainable Finance Initiative (ASFI) has released its first progress report identifying six critical challenges that Australia’s financial services sector must address in order to navigate risks and opportunities for Australia’s future resilience, prosperity and well-being.
• Impact Investment Group (IIG) launched the BOLD Contract, a new financing tool for investing in companies that drive positive social or environmental change. The BOLD loan structure incentivises beneficial outcomes, by decreasing the loan balance as the borrower’s impact increases.
• The Victorian Government released its annual report on the Social Procurement Framework, which clearly defines social and sustainable procurement as a key value-for-money component, and how it can make a difference to our communities.

BANGLADESH

• The Bangladesh NAB translated and published the Bengali (National Language of Bangladesh) version of Sir Ronald Cohen’s book On Impact, making it the first translated version launched publicly.
• The British Council in association with the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), launched the Request for Proposal (RFP) for policy Landscape Analysis of Impact Investment in Bangladesh. This is a precursor to the development of the National Strategies and Action Plan for impact Investment in Bangladesh.

INDIA

• A working group constituted in October has been given the task of creating a framework for setting up the country’s first Social Stock Exchange (SSE). The group plans to study successful SSEs in the UK, Canada, Singapore, Brazil and South Africa to understand best practices and inform the framework. More details
• The world’s largest education Development Impact Bond (DIB) completed its first year and results show that 40% of participating schools either met or exceeded their targets for literacy and numeracy skills. More details
• India NAB, Impact Investors Council (IIC), completed a successful round of 3 city roadshows in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore to increase the understanding of impact investing and attract more domestic capital for the sector. More details

SOUTH KOREA

• The Korea NAB, in association with United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS), hosted the International Conference on Impact Finance for Global Development and Cooperation, in October. Officials from UNOPS and UNDP, along with Korean impact investors, specifically discussed strategies to promote impact finance towards strengthening overseas development efforts by international aid organizations.
• The Korea NAB organized a special seminar on impact finance for the 3rd Segye World Finance Forum, hosted by Segye Ilbo of Korea. Korea NAB Chair Chul Woo Moon and Rosemary Addis from the Australian NAB presented as keynote speakers. The Korean Finance Minister, Mr Eun Sung Soo also joined the seminar along with the several heads of major banks to explore how the Korean finance sector can become more impact-driven.
• The Korea NAB arranged the first SDG Impact Roundtable in Seoul with UNDP representatives from Seoul and Rosemary Addis, Senior Advisor for SDG Impact, in attendance. The discussions addressed the increasing need for Korean impact investment and development institutions to respond to SDG Impact initiatives.
• The Korea NAB organized and delivered Inclusive & Impact Finance Conference, for more than 200 Korean credit unions. Impact-driven financial innovations such as community investment notes, pay-for-performance, and Outcome funds were illustrated as examples for possible adoption by Korean credit unions, individually or as a collective action. 

EVENTS & MORE

• 28 January: Impact Invest Lab annual event, France
• 13 February: Investing for Impact, New York
• 1-3 June: Israel Impact Summit
• 9-12 September: GSG Impact Summit 2020, Johannesburg South Africa

Dear Friends,

We face a global crisis of exceptional magnitude: the covid-19 pandemic challenges our health, lives, and economy, without any exception. The challenges it poses are especially great for countries with more limited health services, older and more vulnerable people, and people on low incomes. The effect will be devastating for many.

This is a time when all of us, as the leaders of the impact movement, must stand up and be counted, show solidarity with those affected and lead efforts to help get through the crisis. We must help our countries to survive through the emergency, and then to revive our economies. Ultimately, we must shape a better system that is able to deal with challenges like this year's pandemic and environmental crises. 

To get through this pandemic, we must demonstrate values of mutual responsibility. Each of us must voluntarily make concessions in order to help us all get through this crisis. 

The GSG stands by your side to:

• share the interventions made by governments, businesses, philanthropists, investors, and civil society to see if measures in one country can help in others

• ensure that impact organisations can redouble their efforts to help the most vulnerable

• design programmes that help to handle this emergency and then the recovery on the other side of it

We will convene our community of leaders through virtual interactions, as effectively as possible: 

• We have no choice but to postpone our 2020 Pan-Africa Summit, scheduled for Johannesburg, 9-11 September, and we plan to hold it in late 2021 (exact dates to be confirmed). Information about refunds can be found on the summit website

• But, since it is so important for us to get together, we are exploring holding a virtual Summit on the same dates and will be in touch with details soon

• Our Mid-Year Leadership Meeting, which was planned for Torino in May, will take place as a virtual meeting

Please do contact me, or anyone in the GSG team, with your ideas as to how the GSG, the NABs, and our strategic partners can best support you, your impact organisations, and the wider community in your country at this most challenging time.

With my personal best wishes and thoughts for your and your loved ones' safety,

Dear Friends,

Today is Amit's last day as CEO of the GSG. I had hoped that we would have a proper send-off for him, but this is obviously not possible at the moment. May I, therefore, use this message to register the thanks of our whole movement for the great contribution he has made to driving our advance over the past three years. 

When I called Amit to ascertain his interest three years ago, I already knew that he was driven, entrepreneurial and got things done. Those were three qualities our Board knew we needed to drive our global expansion. During the past three years, Amit has delivered that and much more. We have discovered him to be an accomplished orator and a charismatic leader; a wonderful human being, who deeply empathizes with those in need; and a passionate advocate and thinker for the impact movement. 

Amit, thank you for all your tremendous efforts over the past three years. If my intuition tells me right, you will be a permanent actor in our movement. We look forward to continuing our work together in the future and wish you all the very best in the next chapter of your career.

Onwards and Upwards!
Ronnie and all your friends at the GSG

Our collective action plan for a just and impact-led recovery

Leaders'' Declaration for a just and impact-led recovery

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