Good Generation

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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