When broker-dealers get in the impact investing game, you know things are happening.

RBC and Brinker Capital both gave presentations at the Denver Impact Investing Conference. And Morgan Stanley is on the stump—exclaiming the value of impact investing. The firm surveyed its top financial advisors and is sharing its findings with the industry at large. (More on this in a future post.)

Broker-dealers are beginning to pay more attention to impact investing because asset managers are accumulating more assets from people who want to do some good with their money—from environmental causes to helping small business owners to even supporting bigger business that have a civic duty underpinning.

Unilever, by example, is betting its stock on its Sustainable Living Plan. The company wants to be the preeminent example of how to do capitalism responsibly.

In any case, as asset managers, or funds, include more holdings big and small, driven by investor demand, that puts broker-dealers into action. Largely, this is because they have products to push onto their sales forces, who in turn can sell these to investors. Commissions and fees all around. But this also means assets are likely to zoom into impact funds.

Still, more funds must be created.

As John Coyne, vice chairman of Brinker Capital, noted, his firm needs to be able to offer out peer-to-peer analysis of funds to advisors. That means having more than one fund in a sector or asset class to present.

Future impact fund managers should take this as a starting gun.