Private Capital, Public Good - Updating the Impact Investing Public Policy Agenda

At a time of unprecedented social, environmental and economic challenges, it is imperative that the public and private sectors come together to chart the course for a just and inclusive recovery.

To that end, the U.S. Impact Investing Alliance — with input from dozens of impact investors, community stakeholders and public policy experts — has spent the past several months discussing policy ideas with the potential to catalyze impact investments as one important tool to shape the response to our ongoing crises. These ideas will soon be published in a comprehensive report titled, “Private Capital, Public Good: Leveraging Impact Investing to Support a Just & Equitable Recovery.” Our goal with this work is to craft a set of narratives that could cut through the noise and make clear the role impact investors can play as Washington responds to this collective moment of crisis.

Through our discussions and collaborations, we have developed a vision for impact investing policy that features two key components:

  1. Transforming Community Investing to Confront Inequality – We need to counteract decades of deliberate underinvestment in Black, tribal, rural and other marginalized communities. The current crises have revealed critical gaps in small business and entrepreneurial ecosystems, which were once the economic engine of a prospering middle class. We have the policy tools to invest in thriving, inclusive and sustainable communities, but we must act urgently to fortify and scale these tools to address ongoing challenges.

  2. Advancing American Leadership through Stakeholder Capitalism – It’s clear that short-term and monopolistic behaviors have hollowed out our local and national economies. But change is coming, and global capital markets are now demanding sustainability, transparency and accountability from corporate actors and financial institutions. To meet this demand and maintain America’s position of economic leadership, we must accelerate the transition to stakeholder capitalism and commit to a new vision of markets that values the impact of investment and business decisions on all stakeholders.

These two themes are interrelated, and they have implications far beyond the work of impact investors alone. But impact investors can and should play a role in bringing this vision to life, both as providers of capital and as advocates who actively engage with communities and other stakeholders.

In the weeks ahead, we will continue to build on this vision and develop a proactive agenda to guide the next two years of policymaking for the White House and Congress.

About the U.S. Impact Investing Alliance

The U.S. Impact Investing Alliance (“the Alliance”) is a non-profit organization dedicated to building the impact investing ecosystem by bridging market gaps and addressing shared challenges. The Alliance’s long-term vision is to place measurable social and environmental impact alongside financial return and risk at the center of every investment decision.

Read the original ‘Private Capital, Public Good’ report published in 2014 by the U.S. National Advisory Board on Impact Investing, the precursor organization to the U.S. Impact Investing Alliance.