So I now can save some breath by saying 'Impact investing' whenever I have something to say about social impact of investments - that still doesn't mean I get the whole picture now!
Below is my comment on a recent article on Forbes titled "Pierre Omidyar, Steve Case And Mike Milken On The BusinessCase For Impact Investing"
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Comment:
Earlier in Jan 2013 I posted a poser on my blog titled
"IRR v/s Social Impact: Do financial institutions necessarily go throughthis dilemma?"
Even as I am still unclear how social-impact can coexist
with bang-for-the-buck at the macro level (~LPs), I see a definite hope in the
approach being pursued by Omidyar Network, which made a great start just by
terming itself as "a philanthropic investment firm' – The document “From
the Field: Lessons Learned in Impact Investing” goes on to showcase how ON
takes this moniker seriously – Bravo!!
From all I could see, ON is still an investment firm that’s funded
(largely) by its philanthropic founders & there is no ‘raising of fund from
LPs’ involved in this unlike most VC/ PE firms that dabble in similar volumes
of investments/ portfolio.
That brings me back this intriguing question of how the
likes of JPM measure their social impact? – I am sure I am missing something
here.
