Category Archives: Lists

Jan 24 2012
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Announcements, Lists

Happy Lunar New Year 2012 – The Black Dragon Arrives!

*Note: Forgive me for less frequent activity or articles this week as I’m celebrating lunar new year with my wife on a nice beach. I could negotiate bringing the laptop, but not the hours it takes to write articles, sorry! Be it as it may…

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Dear Good Generation,

Thought I was excited about January 1 when I shared my 2012 New Year’s resolutions? Think again, because actually NOW is the time to really get started!

Not only is it the official lunar new year for folks of Asian heritage like myself, but it’s a special year to begin with. According to the calendar of elements astrology, this year is the year of the dragon. More precise, the astrology symbol is the dragon and its element in the 12 year cycle this time is water, related to the color black. In other words, it’s the Year of the Black Dragon.

Although I can’t say I am particularly religious about astrology, I do like it when the Chinese predict that my natural element, when combined with the element of a particular year, ends up in an auspicious combination. Word has it that this year, I should “do well in social activities.” Whatever that means, interpreting this liberally to the activity of blogging, I certainly hope that Good Generation will continue to grow its community of readers and contributors as it has to-date. Of course, I don’t expect this to happen just out of nowhere. There’s things I’m looking forward to include going forward.

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Jan 23 2012
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Career, Impact Investing, Lists

A 6-Step Impact Investing Career Checklist (Final Part 5) – Return Expectations and Know Thyself

Key Ideas in this Post

  • Impact investing is the latest hot topic in the do-good community around the world. At its core, the idea of actually “investing” in social-purpose organizations and achieve both “social and environmental” and “financial” returns for money, as an alternative and complement to philanthropy, gets people excited. Whether you think it’s just repackaging of old ideas or a legitimate paradigm shift, this “field” has undeniably gotten significant attention in the last five years.
  • In Part 1 and Part 2 of this 5-part series, I proposed a 6-step mental checklist that may help you navigate your career in this field, and I started with elaborating on the first two items dealing with identifying opportunities and becoming more aware of your actual role on the job.
  • In Part 3, I discussed the importance of  understanding what type of people and personalities manage impact investment funds to determine compatibility with your own style, but also to get a sense how your negotiation may be influenced by their background.
  • In Part 4, I suggested that sensing whether or not your impact investor knows what types of organizations she wants to invest in was very informative because it will tell you a lot about your potential life and the long term viability of the fund you are considering.
  • In this final Part 5, I will ask you to probe for the impact investor’s return expectations as an indication of how much they are in touch with reality and then ultimately how to assess yourself and your preferences before going into that interview.

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Jan 20 2012
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Career, Impact Investing, Lists

A 6-Step Impact Investing Career Checklist (Part 4) – “Targets” or: What to Invest in?

Key Ideas in this Post:

  • Impact investing is the latest hot topic in the do-good community around the world. At its core, the idea of actually “investing” in social-purpose organizations and achieve both “social and environmental” and “financial” returns for money, as an alternative and complement to philanthropy, gets people excited. Whether you think it’s just repackaging of old ideas or a legitimate paradigm shift, this “field” has undeniably gotten significant attention in the last five years.
  • In Part 1 and Part 2 of this 5-part series, I proposed a 6-step mental checklist that may help you navigate your career in this field, and I started with elaborating on the first two items dealing with identifying opportunities and becoming more aware of your actual role on the job.
  • In Part 3, I discussed the importance of  understanding what type of people and personalities manage impact investment funds to determine compatibility with your own style, but also to give you a sense how the negotiation may be influenced by their background.
  • In this Part 4, I will suggest the importance of sensing whether or not your impact investors know what types of organizations they want to invest in. This will tell you something about your potential work environment and the long term viability of the fund you are considering joining.

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Jan 18 2012
13 Comments
Career, Impact Investing, Lists

A 6-Step Impact Investing Career Checklist (Part 3) – “Personalities” or: Who Runs the Show?

Key Ideas in this Post:

  • Impact investing is the latest hot topic in the do-good community around the world. At its core, the idea of actually “investing” in social-purpose organizations and achieve both “social and environmental” and “financial” returns for money, as an alternative and complement to philanthropy, gets people excited. Whether you think it’s just repackaging of old ideas or a legitimate paradigm shift, this “field” has undeniably gotten significant attention in the last five years.
  • In Part 1 and Part 2 of this 5-part series, I proposed a 6-step mental checklist that may help you navigate your career in this field, and I started with elaborating on the first two items dealing with understanding why people seem to care about impact investing, identifying current opportunities, becoming more aware of your actual role on the job, and remain cautious because career development is probably currently not a priority for the majority of impact investing firms but those with most money, scale, and years of experience (which is very few).
  • In this Part 3, I will discuss the third component in the checklist, which involve understanding who you are dealing with as the so-called “impact investor”. I will claim that the personalities of people running impact investment firms nowadays spans a certain spectrum and may or may not be a good fit with you depending on your own preferences and needs. Understanding this will help you probe in your interview and during your research phase to better gauge if a particular firm is the right place for you. Trust me, this is definitely not much talked about when all the media nowadays report and debate on impact investing on its theoretical and abstract features, while paying on average rather little attention to its human level. Let me ask: while impact investing managers can talk passionately about the people their investments help all day and all night, how many can articulate where they see their employees move within their organization in five years? Lastly, do not be surprised if you see a strong theme around money and attitudes towards it. I write about them at length in this post because it is somewhat of an impact investing “dirty little secret” and not discussed because we are supposed to talk about doing good here, right? Well, what I would simply like to do here is to draw the connection between personalities and the way they lead people to interview and negotiate with you sometimes in rather strange, seemingly counter intuitive ways.

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Jan 16 2012
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Career, Impact Investing, Lists

A 6-Step Impact Investing Career Checklist (Part 2) – Defining Your Role

Key Ideas in this Post

  • Impact investing is the latest hot topic in the do-good community around the world. At its core, the idea of actually “investing” in social-purpose organizations and achieve both “social and environmental” and “financial” returns for money, as an alternative and complement to philanthropy, gets people excited. Whether you think it’s just repackaging of old ideas or a legitimate paradigm shift, this “field” has undeniably gotten significant attention in the last five years.
  • Last time, in Part 1 of this 5-part series, I proposed a 6-step mental checklist that may help you navigate your career in this field, and I started with elaborating on the first item dealing with identifying opportunities and reflecting a little on why people are attracted to impact investing to begin with. I distinguished between two types of jobs, with the first group related to the actual impact investors deploying funds, and which include (1) venture-capital/private-equity like funds (e.g., Acumen Fund, Good Capital, Equilibrium Capital Group, Imprint Capital Advisors, Root Capital), (2) specialized institutional investment funds (e.g., Calvert Investments), and (3) engaged foundations (e.g., Skoll Foundation, Omidyar Network). The second group consists mostly of (1) consulting firms (e.g., FSG, Arabella Advisors, etc.), (2) capacity-building foundations (e.g., Rockefeller Foundation), and (3) associations and standardization bodies (e.g., GIIN, MaRS).
  • In today’s Part 2 post, I would like to talk about the typical, characteristic roles that young professionals may play for each type of company and shed a little more light on the R&R one could reasonably expect, although of course acknowledging that in real life everything always depends case by case. On a sidenote, I will also argue that we have to look into the issue of career development, because as I see it, the relative early stage of the industry has in some ways also led to a neglect of providing career visibility to non-senior executive employees of impact investing firms. I would claim that in today’s environment, most company leaders are more concerned about finding answers to subject-matter related questions like impact evaluation, proper screening, deal-making, knowledge piece creations, or publicity. Also, as impact investment funds, out of initial necessity, laterally import managers from the corporate world or from senior positions in nonprofits, the question of how to offer a compelling path for junior and mid-level employees to stay long-term and become executives themselves is arguably not a priority. Hence, the implicit demand to subordinate individual development to the greater social mission, in my opinion, is ultimately a danger and career threat in the business of “doing-good,” and I don’t think impact investing is any different than other do-good jobs in this regard, until time and experience tell us differently.

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Jan 15 2012
4 Comments
Career, Impact Investing, Lists

A 6-Step Impact Investing Career Checklist (Part 1) – Find Your Opportunity

Key Ideas in this Post-Series:

  • Impact investing is the latest hot topic in the do-good community around the world. At its core, the idea of actually “investing” in social-purpose organizations and achieve both “social and environmental” and “financial” returns for money, as an alternative and complement to philanthropy, gets people excited. Whether you think it’s just repackaging of old ideas or a legitimate paradigm shift, this “field” has undeniably gotten significant attention in the last five years.
  • The key benefits, if impact investing can deliver on its promise, are clear: (1) shift mindsets to finally expand the definition of “return” to be more inclusive beyond simple financial metrics, a significant step towards a happy triple-bottom line world will be made, (2) open the floodgates of capital worldwide to help do-good organizations find diverse funding streams through all stages (but especially growth stages) of their development, (3) support philanthropic and development money flow as current main funding sources, and (4) raise standards of quality, transparency and accountability for impact as these new investors demand more rigor and effectiveness from their investees in a measurable way.
  • That said, impact investing is still very early stage and both confusion and lack of agreement prevails on many fronts, raising questions such as: (1) how much financial return is enough?, (2) how do we measure social returns?, (3) how do we prevent mission drift as profit considerations become more important?, (4) what type of organizations exactly are we investing in and (5) is there enough pipeline and liquidity, i.e., enough worthwhile organizations to invest in?

There have been many books and articles, and of course entire conferences like SOCAP dedicated to trying to answer these questions year after year. Meanwhile, the buzz is large enough that we have quite a few people now interested in working on those jobs. But how many of you know what these jobs are about? What assumptions are you making and what expectations do you have? Are you sure about that?

In this 5-part series, taking as usual a career-relevant angle for you, I try to offer a 6-step mental checklist based on personal experience and my current knowledge of impact investing, so that you can (1) better understand what type of opportunities there are currently, (2) ask some meaningful questions to your prospective employer and, most importantly, (3) ask yourself if this is what you want, before you sign the dotted line and join the fun. As always, feel free to weigh in with your own experiences and questions in the comment box for all readers’ benefit.

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Jan 01 2012
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Announcements, Lists

2012 Resolutions

Dear Good Generation,

Here we go again. One year comes to a close, with another one just around the corner. Personally, it’s been a quite fulfilling year for me with a nice wedding and many opportunities to see family and dear friends that I’ve known anywhere from one to over twenty years already. Of course, launching the blog has been rewarding as well and I look forward to Good Generation’s first anniversary twelve months from now. Thanks for all your support and readership so far!

My usual tradition is to fold up a piece of paper with resolutions for the upcoming year, sign it with a ballpoint pen as an act of making it quasi-legally, (and definitely fully symbolically) binding for myself, and carry it with me in my wallet for the next 364 days. Fear not, I will spare you the lethally boring personal stuff here (and no, losing weight is not part of it), but I would still like to make a few public promises I hope you can keep me accountable for.

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Dec 26 2011
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Development, Lists, Reflection, Social Enterprise

Respecting the Poor – What you should and should not expect from “doing good” unto others

Reference:

“10 Things We’ve Learned About Tackling Global Poverty” (Acumen Fund) – published on Acumen Fund’s blog in December 2011

Key Ideas:

  • Impact investing pioneer Acumen Fund celebrates its 10 year anniversary of leading a trend that started from just a handful social investment funds back in 2001 to almost 200 impact players in 2011. The eco-system of engaged donors and investors supporting innovative NGOs and social entrepreneurs worldwide continues to grow as we speak. As part of its reflection, Acumen Fund has included a “Top 10 learnings” list on its blog in its quest to fight global poverty.
  • The list Acumen “has found to be true” is as follows:
  1. Dignity is more important to the human spirit than wealth.
  2. Neither grants nor markets alone will solve the problems of poverty.
  3. Poverty is a description of someone’s economic situation,
    it does not describe who someone is.
  4. We won’t succeed in the long term without cultivating local leaders,
    local money, and strong local communities.
  5. Great people, every time, no exceptions.
  6. Great technology alone is not the answer.
  7. If failing is not an option, you’ve ruled out success as well.
  8. Governments rarely invent solutions, but they can scale what works.
  9. There is no currency like trust, and there are no shortcuts to earning it.
  10. Patient capital investing is built upon a system of values.
  • Reading this reminded me of a fundamental but often neglected aspect in the business of “doing good” that we all had better be very clear about to remember why we do what we do, and not least also to save ourselves a lot of grief and “sinking heart” feeling later on. Hint: it’s got to do with people.

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