Investors who want to make a positive difference with their money said they are meeting both their impact investing goals and their financial goals, according to a survey by the Global Impact Investing Network.
Ninety-eight percent of the 266 investors included in the survey said their investments have met or exceeded their expectations for impact and 91 percent said the investments met their financial performance goals.
The investors included in the annual impact investing survey manage $239 billion in assets, according to the network, which is a nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing the scale and effectiveness of impact investing.
“Fully one-third of survey respondents are motivated to make impact investments because of—not in spite of—their financial return potential," Sapna Shah, managing director at the network, said in a prepared statement. "This shows investors increasingly see alignment between business objectives and transformative impact. Certainly, a long-term approach is warranted as we shift the very essence of financial markets and combat problems that have challenged us for decades, if not longer.”
A subset of 80 respondent organizations that participated in the survey both four years ago and this year grew their impact investing assets from $37 billion four years ago to nearly $69 billion this year, a compound annual growth rate of nearly 17 percent.
During 2018, the respondents, which included fund managers, foundations, banks, development finance institutions, family offices and pension funds, put $33 billion into more than 13,000 impact investments, the report said. They also plan to invest more than $37 billion in more than 15,000 investments during 2019—a 13 percent projected growth in the volume of capital invested and 14 percent growth in the number of investments.
Respondents said measuring the impact of the investments is an important goal and they use a mix of third-party qualitative data and proprietary metrics to do so.
They also said they want to help develop the global impact investing market.
“Investors largely recognize their role in contributing to broader field-building efforts and industry development,” the report said, They “view the impact investing industry as playing a key role in driving broader shifts in investment practice by changing mind-sets about the fundamental purpose of finance in society and promoting diversity, equity and inclusion through their policies and practices.”
Eighty-five percent of respondents said impact investing is their duty as responsible investors.