Our Investment in ImpactAlpha and the Future of Impact Investing
Authors: Common Future
This week ImpactAlpha announced that it raised $3.3 million in equity capital in its seed stage round led by Ford Foundation with additional participation from Common Future, Sorenson Impact Foundation, and media executive Aaron Kissel.
Common Future’s investment in ImpactAlpha is one that follows other intentional moves over the last two years to influence the impact investing field. Specifically:
- An equity stake in SOCAP: The strategic investments in ImpactAlpha and SOCAP were made from a Board Designated Strategic Opportunity Fund specifically designed to further the mission and interests of Common Future in strategic and experimental ways directly from Common Future’s balance sheet;
- Acquisition of Community Credit Lab: Community Credit Lab’s affiliated entity and fund (i.e. CCL Fund) continues to grow and use credit as a tool to enable affordable access to credit for BIPOC communities across the country in partnership with organizations that know their communities best;
- Merger with Uncharted: Uncharted’s past accelerator work also continues to grow under CF as the Common Future accelerator to support organizations closing the racial wealth gap.
As David Bank has shared, ImpactAlpha launched to “cover impact investing like a serious beat in the expectation that it would become one. [And] it has.” ImpactAlpha is now one of the most prominent media sources for impact investors—and we value the diversity of perspectives that it brings to the conversation. We believe that through dialogue we can build a more robust impact investing market that enables us to create the transformation we want to see in our society. A society where all people—no matter their race or class—have power, choice, and ownership over the economy.
ImpactAlpha’s platform has given many leaders in Common Future’s network an opportunity to question the status quo in impact investing and the financial system more broadly. Our network partners’ pieces have pushed readers to rethink how we price and evaluate risk, center community knowledge, and our definition of what constitutes impact investing.
Common Future’s investment in Impact Alpha signals that we are committed to not only being in the conversations to mainstream impact investing as a practice, but also challenging and encouraging conversations to go further to center racial and economic equity.
