• 2011 ImpactAssets 50
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ImpactAssets 50: A Global Landscape of Impact Investment Fund Managers

Please click here for the 2011 ImpactAssets 50.

The past decade has seen a dramatic increase in investment products that achieve financial performance with positive social and environmental impacts.

To help investors make sense of this expanding universe, ImpactAssets 50 offers a list of experienced private debt and equity impact investment fund managers that deliver social and environmental value in addition to financial returns (including leaders from microfinance, community development, fair trade, and other strategies).

The ImpactAssets 50 is a gateway into the world of impact investing for investors and their financial advisors, offering a clear, frictionless way for potential investors to identify experienced impact investing firms and work either independently or with their advisors to explore their potential investment options. It is the first "open source," publicly published list of private debt and equity impact investment fund managers and offers investors a starting place for the discussions and due diligence that must take place before making any impact investment decision.

Criteria and Review

Firms that submitted applications for consideration for the ImpactAssets 50 were reviewed by the ImpactAssets 50 Investment Panel. The Panel is chaired by Jed Emerson, Impact Assets' Executive Vice President, Strategic Development. Ron Cordes, Tim Freundlich, and Sarah Williams serve on the Steering Committee that oversaw the design and management of the program.

The Investment Panel and Steering Committee developed a set of criteria for the IA 50 to ensure that the list included firms with experience in the field, scale in terms of AUM and investor-base, commitment to impact, and represented a range of approaches, asset classes, and impact areas. For a more detailed discussion of how ImpactAssets is evaluating impact in the selection of the ImpactAssets 50, please review the ImpactAssets Issue Brief: Assessing Impact Capacity at the Firm Level.

For inclusion in the ImpactAssets 50, an impact investment fund manager must:

• Have 3+ years experience in the impact investing field
• Have at least $5 million in assets under management
• Operate in -
  • More than one country
  • In a country with significant population; and /or
  • In a sizable region of the United States
• Have 10 or more investors in their fund(s)
• Manage assets that are recoverable
• Have demonstrated financial capacity/oversight
• Demonstrate significant commitment to social impact and clear measures of social impact (GIIRS rating, use IRIS metrics, or other indicators to be determined)