So, there's no way that we can remain as silent as we have been in the past, saying with one hand I'm going to be focused on my investments and with my other hand I'm going to be focused on my philanthropy. You need to say how do we use all of the tools in our tool belt and leverage all of our influence, assets, to help create the world that we want to create?
I'm saying that with a caveat. This kind of change is not easy. It's going to take time to move from having no exposure to impact investments to having some, and from having some to more, because when you divest of something, especially if you're a large shareholder or stakeholder, it will have an effect on the capital markets. It will have an affect on the stock price of something that pension funds might hold. So there's a need to take into consideration the whole ecosystem and over time, look at how you can move from a one percent exposure to two percent, and to five percent. These are millionaires and billionaires.

PW: So it's a lot of money.

Noble: Yes, it's a lot of money.

PW: I know that the ethos is there of "OK, great. We want to create impact, and we all want to pledge part of our impact," but what's the criteria for joining?

Noble: It's by invitation only. It's really designed to be very much a peer network. And part of that is we're looking to our co-founders to help us identify the right people to engage. The first thing that any potential member needs to do is to make the pact. Which is quite simple. Three things: make impact investments, if you haven't made any, or to make some, if you've made some, to make more.

PW: What's the criteria? As you said before, anything could be considered an impact investment.

Noble: I didn't say anything could be considered an impact investment. I said all investments have impact, right? Impact investments have the intention of creating social or environmental positive returns. It's not only about financial value creation. The technical definition of an impact investment is an intentional strategy to target for financial, social, and/or environmental returns that are either actively measured or measurable.

PW: Gotcha. So what's the ultimate goal?

Noble: To get a lot more capital into things that have a positive social and environmental impact. To increase the probability, accelerate the pace of capital going into businesses that have the potential of solving big societal and environmental world problems.

PW: Thank you.

A pact of that kind could indeed shift the goal of finance. It could position capital for good. And with the weight of millennials leveraging the trillions of dollars they stand to inherit, impact is certain. At TheImpact, the movement has already begun.

To find out more about TheImpact and its mission, go to theimpact.org

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