Impact investors like Liesel Pritzker Simmons are a passionate bunch, who care about social and environmental issues and believe their investments should reflect that. So what happens when that conviction meets a presidential administration that doesn’t seem interested in, say, battling climate change or protecting workers’ rights?

Let’s put it this way: Donald Trump does seem to have a knack for motivating people.

“I’ve been having a lot of conversations with other investors about how you can’t rely on government to make good and ethical choices. You have to take the responsibility because your government won’t necessarily do the right thing,” says Pritzker Simmons, who invests alongside her husband Ian Simmons through their family office, Blue Haven Initiative. “These are uncertain times, so where are you going to find certainty? You find certainty in your values.”

Like the rest of the country, impact investors are adjusting to the reality of a Trump presidency and what it means for the issues they care about. Since the November election, charities and nonprofits—from the Sierra Club to Planned Parenthood to the American Civil Liberties Union—have reported surges in what they now call “rage donations,” which seem unlikely to let up as the new president rolls out his agenda. During the weekend following Trump’s executive order on immigration, the ACLU received $24 million in online contributions from more than 356,000 people, six times what it typically gets over an entire year, a spokesman told The Washington Post. Investing to generate both social impact and financial return is, of course, more complicated. Not all problems have obvious market-based solutions—attacks on civil rights being one example—and nobody would advocate buying stock online in a moment of passion. So it will take time to know whether impact investing sees the Trump effect in dollars. But if the intentions of certain wealthy families give us any indication, it just might.

“I see values-aligned investors doubling down,” says Abigail Noble, CEO of The ImPact, a nonprofit co-founded by Justin Rockefeller, Ford heir Jason Ingle and Pritzker Simmons that  educates family offices in investing for impact. “People are identifying specific causes they care deeply about, such as access to education and to health care or renewable energy solutions, and planning to deploy more capital to those high-impact businesses to ensure the right outcomes happen.”

How a broader Trump-driven spike in sustainable, responsible and impact (SRI) investing might play out in 2017 and beyond is unclear. Could SRI see an increase across the board—across sectors, geographies and investor types? Or, like the nonprofit contributions, might certain areas, such as the environment, experience a bump? Are we talking about a boost in dedicated assets from investors already involved in SRI, or could individuals and institutions who’ve been in wait-and-see mode finally take the plunge?

Then again, the cautious might also see Trump’s policies as reason for even more caution. And sophisticated impact investors, who largely focus on private equity, private debt and venture capital, could pull back from sectors in the U.S. that might be stalled by the president’s domestic policies and proposed budget cuts, such as affordable housing and early-stage clean tech, which lean heavily on federal initiatives.

Trump has vowed to slash federal agency budgets—the blueprint being used by his team would reduce spending by $10.5 trillion over 10 years—leading some impact investment advocates to believe in the potential for partnering with government to fill spending gaps and meet common goals. The U.S. Impact Investing Alliance, a nonprofit that works to increase the flow of institutional SRI capital, has already begun meeting with members of Congress to discuss what that might look like, says Fran Seegull, the organization’s new executive director. 

“We think there are some strong opportunities to partner with the new administration to achieve mutually desirable outcomes,” says Seegull, who previously served as chief investment officer at ImpactAssets, a Bethesda, Md.-based nonprofit financial services firm.

“The impacts we seek are strong jobs; strong education outcomes; access to health care and affordable housing; and sustainable infrastructure for water, energy and transportation. Those are very commensurate with policy outcomes. … In a world where it seems that the administration will be cutting some agency budgets, private capital for public good becomes even more important.”

Of course, it should be pointed out that, although he may wish it so, the president of the United States is not a king. As we’ve seen with the court rulings against Trump’s executive order on immigration, which aimed to temporarily ban immigrants from seven predominately Muslim countries, there are limits to presidential power. There are also economic and societal forces beyond the president’s control. For example, much has been written about the declining cost of wind and solar energy and battery storage, and how the clean energy revolution will rage on despite U.S. federal policies. Much has also been written about how the millennial generation pays particular attention to the practices of the companies they buy goods and services from, and their willingness to drop the ones they disapprove of like a hot potato. Just ask Uber. (Hundreds of customers deleted the Uber app in solidarity with Muslim ban protesters in New York City, following claims the company continued to operate at John F. Kennedy International Airport after other taxi services called a strike.)

Similarly, SRI investment has seen steady growth for a decade now, especially over the last three years. Since 2014, SRI assets have ballooned to $8.72 trillion in the U.S., an increase of 33%, according to a recent report by the Washington D.C.-based Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment (US SIF). The report was based on a survey of more than 1,800 institutional investors, money managers and community investing financial institutions. Of the 300 money managers who responded, the number one reason cited for their involvement (85%) was client demand.

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