IMPACT MANAGEMENT PROJECT
Impact Frontiers Asia 2023
AVPN has teamed with Impact Frontiers and Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business to offer a 12-month consultative journey that will help asset owners and managers integrate impact into their investment practice.
Programme starts in July 2023.
Preview the Impact Measurement and Management Modules here.
Introduction
Impact Frontiers Asia
Strengthening Impact Management
A participatory cohort-based program to support investors in establishing or improving their own practice of impact management.
Impact Frontiers and the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) at Duke's University's Fuqua School of Business are partnering to offer a program in which participant will develop and strengthen impact management approaches for use by their own organizations. This builds on the well-regarded Impact Measurement and Management for SDGs online course and extends learning and application through a cohort-based live virtual workshop series.
The program will include monthly meetings over a six-month period, with workshops, case examples and exercises, structured peer sharing and feedback, and coaching. This program is for any investor seeking to either establish a solid foundation of impact management, or to improve their current practices. It is designed to be useful both at the introductory and intermediate levels. It also prepares investors for the more advanced concepts and techniques covered in Impact Frontiers' cohorts.
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Facilitators
Program Facilitators
CASE has worked with thousands of impact organizations, funders, and field-builders to connect theory to practice. CASE specializes in developing practitioner-friendly training and tools to equip impact leaders to succeed and scale their impact. CASE Smart Impact Capital is a professional impact investing program that has been in continuous use since 2016 by over 95 accelerator, fund, and university cohorts. CASE partnered with the UN Development Programme to launch a Coursera course that trains enterprises and investors to enhance their practices around Impact Measurement and Management for the SDGs.
Impact Frontiers also facilitates further consensus building in areas of practice where standards and guidance do not yet exist, using practitioner experience to jump-start the conversations.
Impact Frontiers originated at Root Capital, migrated to the Impact Management Project in 2019, and is now continuing as an independent non profit initiative of the Bridges group.
Mike McCreless is Founder and Executive Director of Impact Frontiers, a learning and innovation forum supporting investors to set and achieve integrated impact and financial goals. In 2020, he led the investors participating in the first Impact Frontiers cohort to co-author the article "How Investors Can Integrate Social Impact With Financial Performance to Improve Both" in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, as well as an accompanying Investor Handbook. Mike previously served as a member of the management team and Head of Investor Collaboration at the Impact Management Project, and Head of Impact at Root Capital, where his article "Toward the Efficient Impact Frontier" was featured in the Winter 2017 issue of SSIR.
Cathy Clark is Faculty Director at CASE at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and Founding Director of the CASE i3 Initiative on Impact Investing. Cathy is globally recognized as a collaborative visionary and pioneering influencer in the fields of social entrepreneurship and impact investing. She has been named a B the Change Champion, Social Innovation Thought Leader of the Year in 2020 by the World Economic Forum, and one of 2021's top 12 Agents of impact by lmpactAlpha. Previously, Cathy was an investor at Flatiron Partners, a philanthropist at the Markle Foundation, and a policy convener at the Aspen Institute. She holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and a BA from the University of Virginia.
Who
Who should join this program?
The Fellows will consist of a competitively selected investors from Private and Public Debt, Private Equity & Venture Capital, Foundations, Fund-of-funds, Family Offices, Public Equity, Endowments & Pensions, Associations and Institutions.
WHAT
Program Benefits
Improve your practices and performance
Build an integarted approach that breaks down silos across frameworks & tools
Use your own data to create your own impact tools, working on the timeframe that suits your organisation
Elevate the field
Respond to the growing demand for impact measurement
Make the case for impact
Attract new capital and allocate capital to impact more effectively and efficiently
Raise the bar through peer sharing and feedback
Program Overview
In the first six months, you will develop and enhance your fund's approach to impact measurement and management. In the second six months, you'll integrate impact alongside financial risk and return, both conceptually and in processes and systems, in order to increase both.
Portfolio Level | Investment Level | Investment Level | Portfolio Level | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Impact Management for Investors | 01 – Introduction and Background to Setting an Impact Strategy
Introduction to 12-month program, identifying and engaging stakeholders, ESG and impact, and defining materiality Exercise: Creating a stakeholder engagement plan | 03 – Integrating Impact into Diligence Process
Data for decision-making mindset, strategies to integrate impact into due diligence process, deciding what to measure, and establishing baselines and targets and thresholds. Exercise: Critiquing fund impact due diligence | 05 – Optimizing Impact
What happened – collect and aggregate data; Why it happened – evaluate impact risks, benchmark, compare to targets, verify ABC; What next – buy, sell, hold, contribute Analyzing enterprise contribution and counterfactuals, and relevance for ABC Goals Exercise: Critiquing fund impact due diligence | 06 – Reinforcing Impact
Aggregating impact data, exploring investor contribution risk, reporting to stakeholders, managing external disclosures, adhering to standards, using 3rd party verification, and deepening governance Exercise: Evaluating and strengthening a fund’s public impact report |
02 – Setting Impact Strategy
Defining your value perspective, investor contribution goals, ABC goals, impact thesis, and investment policy statement. Exercise: Developing an investment policy statement | 04 – Evaluating Impact of Potential Investments
Defining company’s value perspective and narrative of expected impact, using 15 data categories, projecting potential impact, and improving investee impact management practices. Exercise: Using 15 data categories in impact projections and ratings | |||
Impact-Financial Integration | 07 – Why Impact-Financial Integration Enables Impact for Decision-Making
Five steps of impact-financial integration, drafting integrated impact-financial portfolio goals, profiling and designing your ideal portfolio | 08 – Creating Custom Impact Preference & Financial Preference Rankings
Identify which investments offers most of the dimensions of impact and financial performance that you care about | 10 – Interpreting Your Impact-Financial Scatterplot
Plot portfolio by risk-adjusted impact x risk-adjusted financial return, interpret, and draw lessons | 12 – Setting and Achieving Integrated Impact and Financial Portfolio Goals
Construct an integrated portfolio dashboard; ‘pitch’ to internal and external stakeholders |
09 – Advanced Topics
Thresholds & allocations, impact valuation, measuring & managing positive and negative investor contribution | 11 – Optimizing Investment Decision-Making
Investment decision rules, impact-financial hurdle rate, benchmarking, and informal rules of thumb |
A Full Cohort Experience
In 2021, Impact Frontiers launched six investorss cohorts. Whenever possible, Impact Frontiers co-convert cohort with industry associations and networks, to build their capacity to train investors on impact management more independently in the future.
Asia
8 Institution 17 Participants | Canada
9 Institution 25 Participants | US VC/PE
30 Institution 40 Participants | |
Impact Frontiers Led | Early Stage
9 Institution 12 Participants | CDFI
11 Institution 29 Participants | Multi-asset class
13 Institution 22 Participants |
Recently-Added Program Features
In addition to the core workshops, cohort members will now get access to:
- Cohort websites where participants can find all of the presentations, worksheets, session videos, and links to external resources relevant to their cohort
- Dropbox folder of templates and tools shared by other Impact Frontiers participants
- Networking and cross-cohort collaboration opportunities
- Lifetime access to all future Impact Frontiers resources, workshops, and events
- Guest expert speaker series open to all cohort members and alumni. Recent speakers include:
- Tynesia Boyea-Robinson, President & CEO, CapEQ, and Mahlet Getachew, Managing Director, PolicyLink
- Erika Seth Davies, Founder, Racial Equity Asset Lab
- Veronica Olazabal, President, American Evaluation Association; Jane Reisman, Founder, ORS Impact; and John Sherman, Co-Founder, pfc Social Impact Advisors
- Loic Watine, Right-Fit Evidence Unit, Innovations for Poverty Action
- Capstone Presentations (Months 13-18): Following the conclusion of the program, participants will have a six-month window to present and receive feedback from peers and facilitators on the impact management processes they develop over the course of the program.
TESTIMONIALS
What do our members think about AVPN?
We found a lot of value in the cohort model. The sequence of workshops consistently challenged me to think ahead to the next step as we built our new impact management approach. And I gained an amazing set of peers to go to on anything from technical questions on impact ratings to how to build consensus with our internal team and Board
Caitlin Rosser
Calvert Impact Capital
The importance of the visual rhetoric of the tools cannot be overestimated. The charts convey that the impact analytics are now at the same level of rigor as the financial analytics…When you integrate the impact with risk and return you will end up with the same clarity and power as people have come to expect on the financial side.
Tony Berkley
Prudential Financial
Working with Impact Frontiers was an enriching, engaging experience that informed and enhanced BlueHub’s IMM practice. In collaboration with Mike and the Impact Frontiers peers, I refined our social impact rating, developed and iterated a process for incorporating that rating into our financing decisions, and began the process of developing a related tool focused specifically on assessing investment potential to advance racial equity. My organization and I are still benefiting from learnings gleaned through the cohort and my Impact Frontiers peers remain my “go-to” group for advice and insights in this practice.
Catherine Dun Rappaport
BlueHub Capital
Frequently Asked Questions
Participating investors are asked to contribute USD25,000 per organization towards the program.
Program fees will go toward all cohort activities over the 12 months, including core content workshops, facilitated peer feedback sessions, and topical working groups and sessions on global, cross-cutting themes. Participating investors can also receive optional bilateral engagement with Impact Frontiers and AVPN as desired e.g., document review, thought partnership, strategy discussion.
This is a flexible program. Participating investors will likely spend four hours a month on the program, but some months may spend no time or up to eight hours a month, due to workshops, peer feedback sessions, and optional webinars.
Each organization can have up to 2 representatives joining each Impact Frontiers Asia session and this will help to keep the overall group size and discussions manageable. Participating Investors are free to rotate their choice of representatives in each session.
There will be no refunds in the event whereby you cannot complete the program.