The Good Capital Project’s inaugural convening took place in June 2017 in New York City. Read a recap of the GCP’s June launch event here. In the months leading up to the launch event we interviewed key pioneers and leaders in the impact space about the state of the field. The GCP recently published their Why GCP conversation with Debra Schwartz, the managing director of impact investments at The MacArthur Foundation. Here is an excerpt from their interview.
What are the three biggest opportunities in impact?
What are the three biggest opportunities in impact?Rising interest in impact investing is a big opportunity, so long as we can harness it in a way that makes the market inclusive and allows for investing that is unconventional and not purely commercial.
The second big opportunity is for innovation in the intermediation space, with new marketplace platforms providing those important investor on-ramps that I mentioned earlier. It’s also encouraging to see alternative structures springing up, like holding companies that are addressing the critical need for patient capital. These are nascent, but we are seeing more and more of them every day.
The third big opportunity I see is growing engagement among foundations. We are not now, nor will we ever be, the majority of the capital in the impact investing arena. But foundations have a unique potential to advance the market. Because we own our assets, we can take risks that other institutions might not. We can absorb the extra transaction costs of doing something creative or bespoke. And we have “impact fidelity” in our DNA. We can help keep transactions oriented to that north star of impact.
Read our full conversation with Debra Schwartz here.
