With Social Impact Investing Support, Place-Based Model Moves to the Suburbs

March 26, 2019

By: Ashani C. O’Mard, Senior Director of Capital Development at the Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership

Atlanta is home to several inspiring placed-based models of community revitalization – from the transformative work in East Lake to the more recent efforts underway in the city’s Westside neighborhoods of Vine City, English Avenue, Ashview Heights and the AUC. But what about suburban neighborhoods in decline? The Brookings Institution’s “Suburbanization of Poverty” notes that from 2000-2015, poverty in metropolitan Atlanta suburbs increased 126 percent. In fact, 88 percent of the region’s poor now live in Atlanta’s suburbs. Thanks in part to social impact investments from the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta’s GoATL Fund, a suburban placed-based pilot effort is underway in South DeKalb County, Georgia.

For many urban communities, decades of disinvestment, the foreclosure crisis, and resurgent gentrification have compounded issues of homeownership, wealth creation and equity. The very successful East Lake model championed by Purpose Built Communities has changed the financial trajectory of thousands of its residents. A very similar approach is developing right before our eyes in Atlanta’s Westside neighborhoods with Westside Future Fund at the helm. In fact, Purpose Built Communities is now replicating its model in 18 locations – including Grove Park – around the United States. These in-town community development and revitalization efforts are critical to scores of families and small businesses.

Building upon the lessons learned by these “Community Quarterbacks,” Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership, Inc. (ANDP) has kicked off its three-year initiative in South DeKalb County. Home South DeKalb is a three-year initiative that aims to lift homeownership rates, restore family wealth, increase neighborhood stability, encourage community engagement and participation, and improve resident health and wellness outcomes in South DeKalb. In doing so, ANDP will leverage two of the most important community development tenants in South DeKalb – collaboration and investment.

Through the initiative, ANDP will invest $20 million of its existing and new capital to improve areas hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis, especially those neighborhoods impacted by the lingering effects of negative equity – while seeking to encourage broader investment in the region by other community development stakeholders.

A critical component of ANDP’s Home South DeKalb initiative is the innovative partnership with DeKalb County Government. ANDP and DeKalb County are aligning resources to make the most positive community and neighborhood impact. Specifically, the initiative will coordinate with DeKalb County to ensure that county programs and services are leveraged to improve resident quality of life and neighborhood stability.

“The Home South DeKalb initiative complements the county’s renewed commitment to eradicating blight, improving affordable housing opportunities and enhancing quality life for all DeKalb County residents,” said DeKalb County CEO Michael Thurmond at the launch of the initiative in July 2018.

Beyond providing affordable housing, ANDP is working with a wide array of stakeholders to improve health, education, and employment outcomes in South DeKalb. We are partnering with the Atlanta Regional Collaborative for Health Improvement, for instance, on the DeKalb Youth Prosperity Initiative – a four-year initiative launched in 2017 that is bringing together various stakeholders from across the health, housing, education, and community engagement sectors to target school clusters from across DeKalb County and support vulnerable children.

Stabilizing communities and improving the resilience, equity of its residents in suburban communities will require increased investment in innovative and collaborative models. Support from GoATL Fund for our Home South DeKalb initiative – and the growth of social impact investing in general –  is perfectly timed and mission-aligned.

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Ashani C. O’Mard is the Senior Director of Capital Development at ANDP, of which the mission is to promote, create and preserve mixed-income communities through direct development, lending, policy research and advocacy that result in the equitable distribution of affordable housing throughout the metropolitan Atlanta region.

ANDP was created in 1991 as a result of the merger of the Metropolitan Atlanta Chamber of Commerce’s Housing Resource Center and the Atlanta Economic Development Corporation’s Neighborhood Development Department. The impetus for ANDP’s creation was to address the diminishing supply of affordable housing in the Metropolitan Atlanta region as well as to help reclaim declining neighborhoods in its core. Throughout its history, ANDP has supported the creation of more than 11,000 units of housing for people of low-to-moderate incomes.

The Georgia Social Impact Collaborative (GSIC) provides resources to connect, educate and inspire stakeholders for the purpose of accelerating the development of Georgia’s impact investing ecosystem. Recently, GSIC announced the launch of the Georgia Social Impact Map (the “Map”), an interactive platform designed to connect and educate stakeholders interested in accelerating impact investing for social outcomes. Intended as a resource for communities around the state, the Map connects new forms of capital to sustaining and scaling solutions to social challenges. GSIC also provides workshops and programming for training specific groups of stakeholders on ways to leverage impact investing to achieve their impact goals, such as the workshop described below, which was attended by 30 leaders of some of GA’s top social enterprises and nonprofits.

Take Risk and Get Paid Handsomely: One Entrepreneur’s Challenge to Start Ups and Impact Investors

March 23, 2019

By: Jeannie Tarkenton, Founder/CEO, Funding University

Being part of the impact investment “ecosystem” these days means you likely have a mash up of issues on your mind because – thankfully – the movement has matured enough to now have factions, detractors, champions, victors and losers. As a social entrepreneur highly focused on solving one problem – in our case, the problem of access to financial products needed to complete college – I have followed the arc of and commentary on impact investing. But I mostly have been playing in my corner, building a business brick by brick with my team, and learning from our early engaged customers. Over the past four years, however, I have gained a weeds-level view of impact entrepreneurialism and investing. I have a bold challenge to put forth to impact investors and to my fellow social entrepreneurs: Invest more seed capital in exchange for more equity.

Investors should acknowledge and embrace that social impact companies are uniquely difficult to get off the ground. Social enterprises work to retrain ingrained systems such as banking, food production, education, workforce training; they often work against social norms, attitudes, and human biases.

If our goal is to bring more socially focused companies to life, impact investors should account for a higher portion of angel, seed and early stage investments in the investment market. I (humbly) push you to include earlier stage investments in your portfolios AND to demand to be richly compensated for your earlier, higher risk, “rocket fuel” position. Take more equity, more warrants, more board seats, and higher interest rates in exchange for your early, patient capital.

And, now, to my fellow social entrepreneurs, I posit that we need to embrace this compact on our side. In tackling a problem that other entrepreneurs found too difficult to address, we must be prepared to:

1) Consider giving up more ownership of our companies early;

2) Be rigorous as to our concepts’ abilities to scale to a stage in which impact investment is not the only capital attracted to our business model; and,

3) Use early stage impact capital in highly focused ways that will catapult us to achieve milestones needed to attract traditional capital to our stack.

Why is this especially important now? Due to a number of factors, “Seed Stage” investments are slowing significantly, and show no signs of bouncing any time soon. (See table.)

As the Seed Stage market tightens, trends show that any investment labeled “patient” or “social impact” will naturally be trimmed from the overall pool. Seed Stage impact investment funds are already fairly rare, with A to C rounds being where most impact funds make their mark.

The upside to investors who may choose to position some of their money in Angel and Seed Stage is that early-stage capital comes with a lot of exciting, hands-on opportunities to chart the path of a company. For multi-generational family office investors this may be an ideal fit in that younger members of the family may already be asking for more involvement in investments. The ImPact wrote a detailed guide to bring these strategies to life.

The Funding U early investors and board members have given our organization valuable insights and support; and, they each have said they, in return, gained priceless insights and energy from being part of our early growth and maturation.

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Jeannie Tarkenton is the Co-Founder and CEO of Funding U, a fintech company based in Atlanta and operating across the US that uses data analytics to provide ‘last gap’ student loans to low and moderate income students who are rejected by banks because they do not have parent co-signers. The Company’s mission is to remove the financial barrier to college completion while limiting student debt load and providing financial and credit education for customers. Funding U accepts debt investments for its loan fund and provides high single digit returns to investors. Atlanta investors include the Fuqua Family Office. For more information, please contact [email protected]

The Georgia Social Impact Collaborative (GSIC) provides resources to connect, educate and inspire stakeholders for the purpose of accelerating the development of Georgia’s impact investing ecosystem. Recently, GSIC announced the launch of the Georgia Social Impact Map (the “Map”), an interactive platform designed to connect and educate stakeholders interested in accelerating impact investing for social outcomes. Intended as a resource for communities around the state, the Map connects new forms of capital to sustaining and scaling solutions to social challenges. GSIC also provides workshops and programming for training specific groups of stakeholders on ways to leverage impact investing to achieve their impact goals, such as the workshop described below, which was attended by 30 leaders of some of GA’s top social enterprises and nonprofits.

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Mark Crosswell of GoATL Fund

Profile Summary:

The Issue

Social entrepreneurship is about solving problems. Tell us about the challenge you are focused on addressing and why it is critical that we make progress.

We seek to close capital gaps in metro Atlanta on two levels: 1) Strategically investing capital through the GoATL Fund; and 2) Ecosystem development through the Georgia Social Impact Collaborative

The GoATL Fund was established as the Community Foundation’s first immersion into the impact investing space. The fund provides cost-effective loan capital to address critical needs in the community, from healthy, safe housing for every family to new schools for 21st century learners and more equitable access to living-wage careers. GoATL is based on the idea that strategically invested capital can achieve both a positive social impact and a financial return. Our investments focus on the same five Impact Areas that the Foundation supports through grants and other services: Arts, Community Development, Education, Nonprofit Effectiveness, and Well-being. These five areas cover a diverse array of impacts, but our investments all seek to minimize the opportunity gap. That gap could be in Education, the quality of schooling available in one zip code versus another; GoATL invests in opportunities to close that gap. It could be in access to healthy food, so GoATL would invest in creative solutions to increase the availability of healthy food in areas with limited access. Wherever a gap exists, we’re determined to find creative solutions to minimize, if not close, it.

The Georgia Social Impact Collaborative (GSIC) was established to connect and educate stakeholders in order to advance impact investing in Georgia. As a founding member and investor in GSIC, we seek to provide opportunities for social entrepreneurs, enablers, intermediaries, and investors to connect. We develop programs to learn about progressive financing mechanisms. Ultimately, we hope to expand and cultivate the pipeline of investable opportunities for all types of investors and accelerate the deployment of capital from private sector, philanthropic and public sources.

Your Journey

Entrepreneurship is a journey that requires connections and support from a wide array of stakeholders across the ecosystem to help successfully identify, start, and grow a social enterprise.

In 2015-16, while working with a team at Points of Light to grow their Civic Accelerator, a social venture accelerator, we developed an impact fund to make seed-level debt and equity investments in graduates from around the US. As I learned more about the practice, it became very apparent that the market for impact investing in Georgia was way behind and much less developed than other regions of the country. While attending the Social Capital Markets (SOCAP) conference in 2016 with others from Atlanta, we began to talk about ways to foster a more robust impact capital market in our home state. So, with a group of about a dozen others that recognized the same issue, we established the Georgia Social Impact Collaborative to help build the ecosystem for impacting investing in Georgia (more below).

Soon after, in late 2016, I began working with the leadership team of the Community Foundation on their hopes to start Atlanta’s first impact fund that would connect Foundation assets and donors with place-based investments. After joining the Foundation in January 2017, I began researching the field by reaching out to other fund managers and impact investors from around the country about their experiences and investment philosophies. As plans developed, the GoATL Fund concept took shape and soon after, with a $10 million allocation from the Foundation, we established GoATL as a diversified debt fund to make strategic investments to sustain and scale social solutions in metro Atlanta. The Fund made its first investment to Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership in early 2018, and as of year-end, we had deployed just over $3M to support diverse impacts, such as affordable housing, education, job creation and the arts. With demand growing throughout the region for flexibly, cost-effective impact capital, our GoATL team expects to deploy much the remaining $10 million in 2019.

In all of these endeavors, having the assistance and advice of colleagues, mentors and other business and philanthropic professionals has been absolutely critical. At any level, whether supporting social ventures, building an impact fund or developing an ecosystem, the contributions of many dedicated friends and associates has not only been invaluable to the process but highly rewarding personally.

GSIC and the Map

Back to supporting the ecosystem, the mission of the Georgia Social Impact Collaborative (GSIC) is to accelerate the growth of impact investing in Georgia. Over the past 18 months, GSIC’s dozen founders, advisors and over 30 investment partners have engaged hundreds of other investors, nonprofits, social entrepreneurs and individuals who care about scaling social impact through leveraging creative capital. The result of this work is the Map, an interactive resource designed to educate and connect stakeholders interested in impact investing. For more info, see www.GaSocialImpact.com and the Summary Report from phase 1 of the Map.

From your perspective, why do we need to develop Georgia’s Social Impact Ecosystem and how can the Map help with that?

We find that a number of organizations – foundations, banks and corporate philanthropy, governments, and private investors – are either making an occasional impact investment or considering one. However, these instances are fragmented and few have a strategy or sustained initiative to deploy impact capital. We believe investors and investees of all types, and those entities that support them, need greater coordination, connection and education about how and when to use impact capital. So, if we can build a more sophisticated and cohesive ecosystem around impact investing, more investors will be willing to provide the capital necessary for social ventures to thrive. The Map seeks to provide some degree of sophistication; it is essentially a platform to connect and educate stakeholders in the market, to benefit outcomes through investing in promising social entrepreneurs and nonprofits. But the Map is just a tool; we need leaders and innovators to step up and put capital to risk for better outcomes.  The GoATL Fund is an example of putting capital to work for social impact, yet it’s only a drop in the bucket compared to demand in our market for patient, impact-minded capital.

Interested in learning more about GSIC or GoATL, please visit:

Impact Investing and Building the Next Economy

February 19, 2019

By: Nikishka Iyengar, Founder and CEO, The Guild

 

This article originally appeared in Green Money Journal.

Growing up in Mumbai, India’s financial hub, it was hard to escape the pervasive Slumdog Millionaire-esque wealth disparities. Coupled with other issues like gender-based violence, Mumbai served as my primer for recognizing that socioeconomic issues like poverty are a systems issue involving multiple, interdependent systems, and can’t be solved by one or two interventions alone. It also lit a fire in me to use a justice-based lens to dismantle the intersecting systems of oppression that create outcomes where a small percentage of people at the top thrive at the expense — and severe detriment — of the majority at the bottom. That fire stayed with me as I moved across continents in 2007 to pursue a dual degree in Finance and Economics at The University of Texas at Austin. It was an interesting time to be studying those topics. Amid the global financial meltdown, I found myself having more questions than answers about our current economic system of capitalism. I decided to shift my energy to grassroots international development and student organizing instead. As part of an interdisciplinary research study on Microfinance and Sustainable Development in Developing Countries, I spent several summers and winters in South Asia researching grassroots development — including an internship with the Nobel Laureate Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. When back on campus during the fall and spring semesters, I spent time organizing with student-led movements around anti-poverty and climate action campaigns.

Rajasthan Villages Microfinance - The Guild
Working on a grassroots financial inclusion campaign in the villages of Rajasthan, Summer 2008

At the time, microfinance (specifically microcredit) was being touted as a panacea of sorts to ending extreme poverty. It involved giving small, uncollateralized micro-loans to the poorest of women so they could start businesses and help pull their families out of poverty. Women were the primary targets of these loans for two key reasons: the data showed that women spent a higher percentage of their earnings on the well-being of their families than men did, and empowering women economically meant empowering them socially as well — which was of particular significance for communities with rampant gender-based violence. In theory, this seemed to work well for a few years. Women that were previously left out of the formal economy entirely were able to start micro-businesses and contribute financially to sustaining their households.

However, as microfinance started to scale, questions around its true impact surfaced, and the industry experienced a bubble and crash of its own. One of the main critiques of microfinance was its high interest rate, which often climbed over 35 percent and as high as 80 percent in some markets. Theoretically, the risk/return trade off that institutional finance hinges on justified such high interest rates. The borrowers were the poorest of the poor—often unbanked, without any formal identification, and without collateral to back the loan—thereby making them the most risky investment. But it is important to question who bears the true risk in interventions like this — the lender with wealth or the borrower that is already struggling below the poverty line — and whether there is another trade off at play between scale at “market rate” and real impact. The dark side of microfinance that I bore witness to as part of my research was that borrowers who defaulted on their payments were often left worse off than they were before accepting the loan. The lessons from microfinance, and what I learned subsequently in my career after graduating college, have given me a renewed focus in how I approach my work in this industry of Sustainable Business and Impact Investing.

A Grameen Bank borrower making her weekly repayment, Summer 2009

When it was time to think about life after college, I had the choice to either go back home to India and work on grassroots economic development, or stay and find a job in the U.S. I chose the latter with the understanding that so much of what I identified as the root causes of global problems (i.e., capitalism) had its basis and stronghold in the U.S. So after graduating, I went to work at a management consulting firm — one of the few companies that hired international students who required work visas — where I worked my way to our newly minted social impact and sustainability consulting practice. There, I worked with Fortune 500 clients on their sustainability strategies, helping them transition to renewable energy, implement community impact initiatives, and reduce carbon emissions. Much like my experience with microfinance, what soon became apparent and frustrating — millennials are nothing if not impatient, right? — was that all of our work in corporate responsibility was only having an incremental impact at best. But the severity of the problem demanded exponential and transformative change. As businesses continue their pursuit of relentless growth, wealth continues to accumulate at the top while climate change continues to accelerate at a truly apocalyptic pace. And, increasingly, more middle and low-income communities are stripped of their autonomy and power.

What impact is Sustainable Business and Impact Investing having on a net basis? As impact investing moves from niche to mainstream, it is critical we ask these questions. The majority of impact investing funds today seek a market rate-return, and while the last few decades have proven that investing for impact can indeed be profitable, we need to question to what extent they need to be profitable. As microfinance has shown us, market returns can help achieve scale, but not necessarily impact. Consider the history (and present) of this country’s economy — built by enslaved labor on stolen land and furthered by free-market capitalism that keeps Black and Brown labor in global supply chains oppressed while continuing to extract natural resources at unsustainable rates. What does a market-rate return perpetuate in a market that is based on these fundamentals?

Bringing this line of questioning home, I examine my personal finances by asking myself three overarching questions: How am I making money? How am I investing it? And how am I spending it? As I’ve transitioned from working a job to becoming a full-time social entrepreneur, I routinely ask myself if I’m making money in a way that allows me to have the impact I want, or if I’m unintentionally reinforcing oppressive systems. From an investment perspective, at a minimum, I recommend examining your banking relationship. I opened an account with a credit union last year and am working on fully transitioning out of my current account with a large bank. We millennials love our convenience, and while credit unions don’t always offer the same online banking experience as the bigger banks, they also don’t do the same kind of harm. Most multinational banks fund (with our deposits) private prisons and pipelines that destroy indigenous lands, while community banks and credit unions are more likely to fund small businesses in our communities. If you have an IRA/401K along with a regular savings account, you can also look into platforms like Swell Investing and OpenInvest or work with a fund manager to screen for and divest from investments in the weapons industry, fossil fuels, etc. I also invest a portion of my savings with RSF Social Finance through a social investment fund note. The returns are small and fixed — but at 1.25% they’re greater than what you’d make if the money was in a savings account, and it’s comparable from a liquidity standpoint, and you get the opportunity to directly invest in social enterprises that are making an impact on issues you care about. If you’re a millennial with sizable wealth, you can even go a step further: Millennial-led organizations like the left-leaning Resource Generation are committed to investing in the equitable distribution of wealth and power. And finally, am I spending money on ethical consumption or am I contributing to our impending ecological crisis? Do I have a giving strategy that is proportionate to the amount of money I save?

I still have a long way to go, but asking myself these questions along the way helps me recenter and refocus my priorities. The most important work of our time, is building a new economy that is based on entirely different fundamentals than our current extractive economy, and it’s heartening to know and work with so many of my fellow millennials who are leading the charge.

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Nikishka Iyengar, a systems entrepreneur working at the intersection of finance, climate action and racial justice. She is the founder and CEO of The Guild, an organization focused on building community wealth through equitable and entrepreneurship. She is also the owner of Whole Systems Collective, an impact consulting collective working towards a just and regenerative economy through two key initiatives – the transformation of our financial systems, and climate action through carbon drawdown and responsible stewardship of our natural resources. Previously, as a sustainability consultant at a top management consulting firm, she helped her clients unlock ~$1B worth of value from renewable energy, water stewardship, and emissions reduction opportunities. Then, as a product manager at a waste tech startup, Nikishka built software (including artificial intelligence products) to allow companies to uncover waste diversion opportunities within their supply chain and operations.

Nikishka was recognized by GreenBiz as a “30 under 30” emerging leader in sustainability. She has a BBA in Finance, a BA in Economics and an Interdisciplinary Certificate in International Development from The University of Texas at Austin.

The Georgia Social Impact Collaborative (GSIC) provides resources to connect, educate and inspire stakeholders for the purpose of accelerating the development of Georgia’s impact investing ecosystem. Recently, GSIC announced the launch of the Georgia Social Impact Map (the “Map”), an interactive platform designed to connect and educate stakeholders interested in accelerating impact investing for social outcomes. Intended as a resource for communities around the state, the Map connects new forms of capital to sustaining and scaling solutions to social challenges. GSIC also provides workshops and programming for training specific groups of stakeholders on ways to leverage impact investing to achieve their impact goals, such as the workshop described below, which was attended by 30 leaders of some of GA’s top social enterprises and nonprofits.

Measuring Social Impact on Technology Investments

February 15, 2019

By: Sean Williams, Performance Measurement, TechBridge

 

How do you measure the social impact of technology investment? It’s a big question TechBridge has been working to answer for nearly 25 years. In 2001, TechBridge held our first annual Digital Ball, inspired by the Silicon Valley Charitable Ball, where we gathered local CIOs and technology leaders of major companies together to celebrate success over a black-tie gala. Proceeds went to TechBridge, with a mission to use the funds to bring the power and benefits of technology to local nonprofits in need. The results have been overwhelmingly successful. Today, hundreds of nonprofits have benefited from TechBridge services, and the Digital Ball attendance has grown to over a thousand technology leaders (the largest event of its kind in our city), expanding from a single event in Atlanta to a series of events held across communities in Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee.

As TechBridge has grown, so has our need to standardize how we capture and communicate the outcomes of our technology investments. Inspired by efforts in the social impact arena to quantify the value of social investments in dollar terms, through metrics such as Social Return on Investment (SROI) and Impact Multiplier of Money (IMM), TechBridge has developed an internal tool, referred to simply as the “ROI Calculator,” to demonstrate the value of our technology investments in terms of dollars saved, hours saved, and additional clients served over a 5-year period. In July, TechBridge began requiring all technology projects to capture and report on ROI metrics at the beginning of the project, the end of the project, and six months following the project completion.

The additional rigor has been well received by the nonprofits we serve, who are able to report the outcomes back to their own funders and board members. The Atlanta Mission, a network of shelters for the homeless including the city’s largest men’s shelter, was able to win board approval and raise the funding needed for a major overhaul to their donor management system after TechBridge calculated the project’s value at over $100,000 per year in annual cost savings and a 5-year ROI of 216%. Rainbow Village, a transitional housing program for families in Duluth and recipient of the TechBridge 2018 Dream Big Georgia Award, included TechBridge’s ROI Calculator estimate in a grant application to the Episcopal Community Foundation for Middle and North Georgia. They won approval, giving them the additional funds needed to implement a newly customized Salesforce-based client management system. The new system is scheduled to be up and running by the end of this summer and estimated to save Rainbow Village $18,900 per year through reducing staff member time required to manually enter, aggregate, and report on client metrics.

We are thrilled to share these stories of success, and our journey of measuring the impact of technology investments is continuing to grow and evolve. Thanks to a collaborative project with a Georgia Tech student group, Epic Intentions, TechBridge has developed an ability to visualize outcomes from the ROI Calculator using Tableau dashboards. In March, TechBridge will co-present with Los Angeles-based Mercy for Animals and Chicago-based National Immigrant Justice Center on the ROI Calculator at NTEN’s 2019 Nonprofit Technology Conference.

Finally, TechBridge is now taking the additional step to translate the direct outcomes of technology investments (dollars saved, hours saved, and clients served) into the estimated economic impact of those outcomes to society. By connecting our ROI data to evidence-based academic studies, we hope to deepen insights into our technology investments and answer questions such as, “What community savings have we achieved through the reduction of uninsured emergency medical costs as a result of increasing the capacity of The Atlanta Mission or Rainbow Village through technology?” The process is complex, but we are beginning to achieve real results by leveraging existing tools, such as the Low Income Investment Fund’s (LIIF) Social Impact Calculator, as well as investing R&D funding into our own technology which we hope to bring to market later this year.

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TechBridge is a nonprofit that arms other nonprofits on the frontline of alleviating the causes of poverty with technology that will allow them to expand the impact of their mission for the millions of men, women and children who suffer from lack of access to shelter, food, employment, education, healthcare, and financial literacy. Since 2000, they’ve provided IT consulting and services to thousands of nonprofits nationwide and in seven countries. By matching the needs of nonprofits with the skills and financial resources of the technology community, TechBridge helps nonprofits harness the innovative technology and best practices long enjoyed by the corporate sector.

The Georgia Social Impact Collaborative (GSIC) provides resources to connect, educate and inspire stakeholders for the purpose of accelerating the development of Georgia’s impact investing ecosystem. Recently, GSIC announced the launch of the Georgia Social Impact Map (the “Map”), an interactive platform designed to connect and educate stakeholders interested in accelerating impact investing for social outcomes. Intended as a resource for communities around the state, the Map connects new forms of capital to sustaining and scaling solutions to social challenges. GSIC also provides workshops and programming for training specific groups of stakeholders on ways to leverage impact investing to achieve their impact goals, such as the workshop described below, which was attended by 30 leaders of some of GA’s top social enterprises and nonprofits.

Learning How to Leverage Impact Investing Firsthand at SOCAP18 in San Francisco

December 7, 2018

By: Ted Kietzman 19MBA and Janvi Pamnani 21BBA, Emory University’s Goizueta Business School

Impact investing is a growing trend in the world of social impact and entrepreneurship. Traditionally, social enterprises were formalized as nonprofit entities and competed for grant funding from government and philanthropic foundations. However, in the past decade or so, financial support of impact has evolved. Mission-oriented organizations that earn revenue for their services now seek capital from investors looking for a combined fiscal and impact return on their investment.

This trend is found on the Emory campus in the form of the Emory Impact Investing Group and the Goizueta Impact Investors. The former (EIIG) is comprised of BBA students who invest debt capital in microbusinesses, often from Emory’s own Start:ME accelerator. GII is the MBA complement to EIIG and invests larger amounts of capital in social enterprises throughout Georgia.

In order to support the work of both student groups, the Social Enterprise at Goizueta (the school’s social enterprise center) sent us to the premier Impact Investing conference in the world—SOCAP.

SOCAP brings together representatives from non-profit, banking and academic sectors to discuss points of intersection. The conference is structured “festival style,” meaning at any given point there are several expert panels going on. Themes or “tracks” structure the conference for attendees interested in specific topics. While impact investing is always at the core of SOCAP, this year’s conference also had emphasis on themes such as “Gender + Markets” and “Blockchain for Impact.” Just as informative as panels, however, are the opportunities to network with people in the impact investing space. SOCAP itself hosts these events at the venue, the Fort Mason Center for the Arts, but organizations in the San Francisco area will also host happy hours for SOCAP attendees. As students, we soaked up as much as we could at both panel sessions and extracurricular events.

To be honest, the conference experience was a bit overwhelming. Fort Mason, San Francisco, a repurposed infantry base, became a haven for thousands of social entrepreneurs, impact investors, and intermediary entities like accelerators or government officials. In order to get some introductory information and hopefully influence the rest of the trip, one of the first panels we attended was Impact Investing: A State of the Field, a fireside chat-style session hosted by Fran Seagall, the executive director of the U.S. Impact Investing Alliance.

The panel ended up being a perfect start to the conference because it functioned as an overview of impact investing in the United States and the current trends throughout the industry. One interesting trend she noted was the increasing democratization of impact investing. In impact investing’s nascent stage, the financial instrument was only available to creative, and ambitious, traditional investors with lots of capital. However, in the past year or so, institutions like PAX World Funds and Calvert Impact Capital have opened gender- or community-based investment funds to consumers who want to invest small amounts of capital impactfully. However, Seagall also noted the negative trend towards “impact washing.” Impact washing is the act of manipulating data or results to show a promised social return, or even outright fabrication of impact.

Though the panels provided a wonderful amount of content and experience, it was not the only slated activity for us. On Tuesday evening, the Goizueta team headed to the Autodesk headquarters for a happy hour where we met some leaders in the impact investing space. One group that stuck out to us as student impact investors was Access Ventures, a team based in Louisville, Kentucky, that invests in local businesses. For Access Ventures, the missions of its investees matter just as much as financial fit. As leaders of EIIG and GII, groups that support impactful businesses in the Atlanta community on a volunteer basis, it’s awesome to know that there are people who do what we do full-time and sustainably.

On Thursday evening, we were treated to dinner at Besharam, a restaurant that was born out of the La Cocina network. The restaurant had incredible food and a good atmosphere, but also gave us the chance to experience the success of a food accelerator model. La Cocina provides affordable commercial kitchen space, industry-specific technical assistance and access to market opportunities for marginalized chefs. EIIG has worked with several food-based businesses, so it was wonderful to see the fruits of mentorship and support in the restaurant industry outside Atlanta. The leaders at the Social Enterprise Center will keep in contact with the team at La Cocina, hopefully bringing insights from La Cocina’s success back to Atlanta.

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Business education has been an integral part of Emory University’s identity since 1919. That kind of longevity and significance does not come without a culture built on success and service. Emory University’s Goizueta Business School offers a unique, community-oriented environment paired with the academic prestige of a major research institution with global reach. The hallmark of the Goizueta experience is learning in a tight-knit, intimate community where every student, faculty member, and administrator knows each other by first name. The school trains business leaders of today and tomorrow with an Undergraduate degree program, a Two-Year Full-Time MBA, a One-Year MBA, an Evening MBA, two formats of an Executive MBA, a Master’s of Business Analytics, a Doctoral degree and a portfolio of non-degree Emory Executive Education courses. Together, the Goizueta Community strives to solve the world’s most pressing business problems. The school is named for the late Roberto C. Goizueta, former Chairman and CEO of The Coca-Cola Company.

The Georgia Social Impact Collaborative (GSIC) provides resources to connect, educate and inspire stakeholders for the purpose of accelerating the development of Georgia’s impact investing ecosystem. Recently, GSIC announced the launch of the Georgia Social Impact Map (the “Map”), an interactive platform designed to connect and educate stakeholders interested in accelerating impact investing for social outcomes. Intended as a resource for communities around the state, the Map connects new forms of capital to sustaining and scaling solutions to social challenges. GSIC also provides workshops and programming for training specific groups of stakeholders on ways to leverage impact investing to achieve their impact goals, such as the workshop described below, which was attended by 30 leaders of some of GA’s top social enterprises and nonprofits.

Be Wary of Opportunity Zones in Georgia

December 5, 2018

By: Deborah Kasemeyer, Northern Trust

Opportunity Zones (OZs) could lead to greater infusions of capital into historically underinvested neighborhoods. And with over 250 OZs in Georgia, only 27 of which are in Atlanta, much of our state is eligible for investment.

A bipartisan idea injected into the new federal tax law, OZs are an innovation that could narrow a capital gap in the market. When realized capital gains are reinvested into OZs, investors become eligible to receive tiered tax benefits tied to investments at 5-, 7-, and 10-year terms. Some estimates suggest the market to qualify for this tax credit is as large as $6 trillion.

But use this as a warning sign: The legislation provides investors with the ability to invest without regard to the social impacts of their investments.

While the tax credits could lead to unprecedented investments in low-income communities, we need safeguards. We need transparency in the reporting on investments and on their local impacts, and we need safeguards that prevent investors from extracting wealth from low income communities and benefiting from public dollars. We want OZs to work for communities, we do not want communities to work for OZs.

The recently proposed rules contain neither requirement. 

One of the only requirements of funds is that they not be invested in “sin” businesses: liquor stores, massage parlors, tanning salons, casinos, and the like.

So it should not be a surprise that many community development leaders have sounded the alarm. Will investors be motivated to build affordable housing? Or will OZs simply speed gentrification and displacement.

Some funds are championing investments in equitable developments.

Enterprise Community Partners, one of the country’s largest nonprofit development banks, is raising a $250 million fund – the Emergent Communities Fund – for the southeast. With an initial focus on South Carolina and Virginia, they seek to make sure OZs are used for main street community development in smaller cities in our backyard.

But OZ investments are not limited to real estate. Village Capital, led by Atlanta-native Ross Baird, is raising a fund to invest in early-stage startups and real estate in OZs. And LISC is providing consulting services, including administrative, management and impact measurement, for investors with mission-oriented strategies.

While OZs present investors with a new tool to defer capital gains and, for some, have capital gains forgiven, there are risks that OZs will not be used responsibly. And with all the excitement around them, it’s easy to get caught up.

As you explore opportunities to invest in OZs or leverage capital for your OZ projects, remember to think about the social impacts you are generating.

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Deborah Kasemeyer is a Senior Vice President at Northern Trust, a $100 billion financial institution headquartered in Chicago, Illinois which is a leading provider in wealth management, asset servicing and asset management with assets under custody of US$6.1 trillion and assets under management of US$875 billion. As the Director of Community Development & Investments, she oversees the Bank’s community development activities in 19 states and Washington D.C. and a community development investment portfolio of over $600 million. A member of the Board of Directors of National Association of Affordable Housing Lenders (NAAHL) and IFF, she graduated from DePauw University with a B.A. in Economics.

The Georgia Social Impact Collaborative (GSIC) provides resources to connect, educate and inspire stakeholders for the purpose of accelerating the development of Georgia’s impact investing ecosystem. Recently, GSIC announced the launch of the Georgia Social Impact Map (the “Map”), an interactive platform designed to connect and educate stakeholders interested in accelerating impact investing for social outcomes. Intended as a resource for communities around the state, the Map connects new forms of capital to sustaining and scaling solutions to social challenges. GSIC also provides workshops and programming for training specific groups of stakeholders on ways to leverage impact investing to achieve their impact goals, such as the workshop described below, which was attended by 30 leaders of some of GA’s top social enterprises and nonprofits.

Rutu Chaudhari of The Dharma Project on SOCAP

SAN FRANCISCO- October 2018- I am the owner of a yoga studio called All Life is Yoga, and the Founder and Executive Director of the Dharma Project, an Atlanta-based non-profit that brings mindfulness and yoga to communities and organizations that experience high levels of stress and/or trauma. This includes public servants like police officers, first responders, teachers, and leaders in government and the nonprofit sector.

Since our launch in 2016, The Dharma Project has had the privilege of partnering with many organizations, including At-Promise Center, Atlanta Public Schools, Community Foundation of Greater Atlanta, Greening Youth…the Dharma Project has launched programs to serve police officers from 3 precincts in Atlanta and over 20 teachers across the metro Atlanta area. The Dharma Project was selected as a winner of the United Way of Greater Atlanta’s SPARK Prize and Rutu was named “Best Yoga Teacher in Atlanta” by Creative Loafing, was awarded the 2016 Civic Innovation Fellowship through the Center for Civic Innovation (with support from the Community Foundation), and received an investment from SPANX founder Sara Blakely for her work.

Most recently, the Dharma Project received a Social Impact Loan from Invest Atlanta and Spanx. This zero interest loan has supported our ability to create organizational stability and increase capacity by hiring a Director of Operations.

Just last month, I had the opportunity to attend the Social Capital Markets (SOCAP) Conference in San Francisco, the world’s largest annual convening of impact investors and social entrepreneurs. As a guest of the Community Foundation and its GoATL impact investment fund, I joined a group of other Atlanta leaders (including several founders of the Georgia Social Impact Collaborative) to learn about the latest trends is social innovation and impact investing. Being at SOCAP was so inspiring and I’m grateful for the Community Foundation for offering me this opportunity. The vitality and urgency of impact investing made it, at times, feel like a movement. There were financial institutions, venture capitalists, nonprofits, educators, foundations, consulting firms, those in agriculture business, those fighting for indigenous people’s justice, etc.—I was surrounded by change-makers and those that want to invest in them! It’s difficult to receive loans for social good, so hearing stories of how ROI’s are framed was enlightening. What is the economic value of justice, human rights, democracy? I enjoyed learning from those that are doing the hard work on how they used investments to build stronger organizations and increase impact and from investors on what they’re investing in and why.

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Rutu Chaudhari is the Founder and Executive Director of The Dharma Project, which provides self-care practices to public service organizations and the communities they serve. Learn more about The Dharma Project at https://www.thedharmaproject.org/. 

The Georgia Social Impact Collaborative (GSIC) provides resources to connect, educate and inspire stakeholders for the purpose of accelerating the development of Georgia’s impact investing ecosystem. Recently, GSIC announced the launch of the Georgia Social Impact Map (the “Map”), an interactive platform designed to connect and educate stakeholders interested in accelerating impact investing for social outcomes. Intended as a resource for communities around the state, the Map connects new forms of capital to sustaining and scaling solutions to social challenges. GSIC also provides workshops and programming for training specific groups of stakeholders on ways to leverage impact investing to achieve their impact goals, such as the workshop described below, which was attended by 30 leaders of some of GA’s top social enterprises and nonprofits.

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Emory Impact Investing Group

Profile Summary:

The Issue

Social entrepreneurship is about solving problems. Tell us about the challenge you are focused on addressing and why it is critical that we make progress.

“Emory Impact Investing Group was founded in 2014 to provide microloans to local entrepreneurs who lack access to capital.

Formally known as the ‘Microbusiness gap,’ research shows that there is ~30% drop in number of microbusinesses per capita from low- to high-poverty neighborhoods in the United States. To unlock the full economic potential of the Atlanta community, EIIG aims to close the microbusiness gap in traditionally high-poverty areas by increasing the number of successful small businesses. We direct our efforts in pursuit of this goal by providing early-stage financing, knowledge, and networks necessary for the sustainable growth of businesses.”

Your Journey

Entrepreneurship is a journey that requires connections and support from a wide array of stakeholders across the ecosystem to help successfully identify, start, and grow a social enterprise.

“Dr. Peter Roberts and the Social Entrepresize @ Goizueta at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School have done extensive research on entrepreneurship in the metro-Atlanta area. His findings have revealed the presence of a microbusiness gap between low- and high-poverty neighborhoods. Dr. Roberts identified high-poverty neighborhoods within Atlanta that lack small businesses, but are economically capable of supporting them. This belies a large problem: a lack of initial capital and network resources for entrepreneurs in Atlanta that need them most. EIIG was created to be a part of the solution to this problem, providing microloans to local entrepreneurs who offer macro benefits and direct social impact to their local community.”

GSIC and the Map

The mission of the Georgia Social Impact Collaborative (GSIC) is to accelerate the growth of impact investing in Georgia. Over the past 18 months, GSIC and its partners have engaged hundreds of investors, nonprofits, social entrepreneurs and others who care about scaling social impact through leveraging creative capital. The result of this work is the Map, an interactive resource designed to educate and connect stakeholders interested in impact investing. For more info, see www.GaSocialImpact.com and the Summary Report from phase 1 of the Map.

From your perspective, why do we need to develop Georgia’s Social Impact Ecosystem and how can the Map help with that?

“The entrepreneurial spirit is at the core of the Georgia community, from high-growth tech to a thriving small business network. When working with social entrepreneurs, matching needs to support resources is crucial for driving impact. Integrating all impact investing stakeholders into one platform is the next step towards building a leading model for economic empowerment, implementable in other states across the nation. Georgia’s Social Impact Ecosystem will allow organizations and individuals to start sharing best practices, monitoring and evaluating impact, and ultimately, provide an enabling environment for businesses to thrive within Georgia.”     

Interested in learning more about the Emory Impact Investing Group, please visit:

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Greg Block of First Step Staffing

Profile Summary:

  • Entrepreneur Name: Greg Block, Founder and Chairman
  • Venture Name: First Step Staffing
  • Impact Focus Area(s): Homeless, Workforce Development, Disability Services
  • Business Stage (Ideation, Startup, Early, Later, Mature): Later
  • Year Venture Established: 2007
  • Business Type: Nonprofit Social Enterprise
  • Headquarters: Atlanta, GA

The Issue

Social entrepreneurship is about solving problems. Tell us about the challenge you are focused on addressing and why it is critical that we make progress.

First Step Staffing is a nonprofit staffing agency whose mission is to fight homelessness and poverty. Founded in 2007, First Step’s focusing on securing sustainable income for individuals transitioning out of homelessness, including veterans, re-entering citizens, and others with significant barriers to employment. “There were a lot of work readiness programs…but there weren’t really jobs at the end of them. So we decided to start First Step Staffing to create that pipeline,” said Greg Block, who founded the nonprofit in 2007. What makes First Step different than traditional for-profit staffing agencies is that they give priority to those who may have some kind of “barriers for employment,” said Dave Shaffer, CEO.

Your Journey

Entrepreneurship is a journey that requires connections and support from a wide array of stakeholders across the ecosystem to help successfully identify, start, and grow a social enterprise.

In January 2018, First Step Staffing announced its expansion into Philadelphia through its acquisition of the Philadelphia-based division of On Time Staffing—a for-profit staffing company founded 18 years ago specializing in warehouse, packaging, and manufacturing jobs—which will now become part of First Step’s nonprofit operations. In the first 12 months of operation in Philadelphia, First Step expects to employ 500 homeless men and women and grow to serve more than 1,000 by year three.

The Philadelphia acquisition was funded by philanthropic dollars, including a significant grant from The Barra Foundation, support from the City of Philadelphia, investments by a consortium of socially-minded members of Investors’ Circle, and a senior acquisition loan from four Community Development Financial Institutions (“CDFIs”), including Nonprofit Finance Fund (“NFF”), Reinvestment Fund, Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), and Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation.

The expansion into Philadelphia came two years after First Step completed its first successful acquisition of a for-profit staffing company in Atlanta. That acquisition helped the organization more than double the reach of its offering in home-town Atlanta, where First Step now places over 1,000 men and women per day into the workforce.

Interested in learning more about First Step Staffing, please visit: