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6th Annual Meeting & Reception

6th Annual Collage

On May 22nd in New York City, we welcomed Signatories and invited guests to our 6th Annual Meeting and Reception, a gathering of leaders from across the global impact investing community with a shared commitment to impact integrity and transparency.

The session began with welcome remarks from Andrew Lee of UBS Global Wealth Management, representing the Advisory Board, and Sapna Shah, President of our host organization the Global Impact Investing Network. Both speakers highlighted the encouraging growth of the Impact Principles community over the past six years, as well as its potential to lead in this moment of uncertainty for the global impact market.

Head of Secretariat Joohee Rand delivered a Secretariat update, sharing our progress in pursuing strategic priorities. These included conducting global outreach, with recent events in Singapore, Brazil, and South Africa and upcoming events in Japan and Singapore; providing thought leadership and educational resources about impact management like our Common and Emerging Practices Series; and offering curated and differentiated programming for the Signatory community. Rand also discussed our overarching priority of engaging asset owners and allocators to better support their selection and engagement of asset managers, recognizing their powerful influence in shaping impact integrity, transparency and best practices in the global impact investing market.

This final priority brought us to the primary focus of discussion for the afternoon, segueing into our panel discussion on the theme of LP/GP Expectations and Leadership for Impact Management: Opportunities, Challenges and the Role of the Impact Principles in the Evolving Market, featuring:

  • Sunit Shah, Principal, Private Equity Partnerships, Blue Earth Capital
  • Rob Davies, Head of Impact Management, British International Investment (BII)
  • Katherine Kitson, Director, Impact, EQT Future
  • Julie Wallace, Head of Impact, LeapFrog Investments and
  • Maya Chorengel, Co-Managing Partner at The Rise Funds, TPG

The panelists represented a diverse array of organizations, including both LPs and GPs, traditionally mainstream and impact-specialist investors, and founding and newer Signatories. The panelists shared their experiences in LP-GP engagement from their unique vantage points, including concrete examples of how LPs influence manager behavior and incentivize accountability mechanisms for impact and how GPs shape best practices and educate a diverse and expanding base of LPs on what robust, context-specific impact practice looks like in action. 

A few key takeaways included:

  • Market-building leadership for LPs: While asset owners can and do use the Impact Principles to develop their own impact systems and processes, they also have an opportunity as LPs to support the broad adoption of impact best practices among their GPs, thereby elevating impact integrity, rigor and outcomes both within their portfolios and for the broader impact investing market.
  • Deeper engagement with GPs: LPs rely on asset managers to conduct rigorous impact measurement and management for their own impact performance and reporting. Some LPs demonstrate impact leadership through deeper engagement with GPs, for example by collaborating on data and insights to improve impact performance, providing technical assistance for IMM, or supporting verifications for emerging managers.
  • Establishing impact credibility and alignment: Aligning with the Impact Principles has helped Signatories – both impact specialist and mainstream investors – demonstrate impact rigor and establish credibility with existing and potential LPs, as well as ensuring internal alignment for robust impact practices.
  • GPs’ role in educating LPs: Transparency and rigor in impact management practices can help managers build trust and support their efforts to educate LPs about impact frameworks and best practices. GPs also have an important role in making the case for impact as a form of value creation linked to financial performance, which can help open more doors to support the growth of the impact investing market.
  • On-ramp for mainstream investors: Impact Principles can be particularly effective in providing an on-ramp for mainstream investors entering the impact space, allowing them to bring along their institutional investors in the impact journey and help mobilize capital at scale with rigor and integrity.
  • Call for collaboration: We all play a role in educating and shaping the market. There is an opportunity for GP-LP collaboration and Impact Principles community to ensure that the impact investing market is driven by best practices in impact management, and not regulatory compliance.

As the impact investing market continues to evolve, gatherings like our Annual Meeting and Reception serve as vital opportunities to foster alignment, strengthen collaboration, and deepen relationships and engagement across the impact investing landscape. We’re grateful to all who joined us for this inspiring convening, and especially to our speakers for their thoughtful contributions.

Together, we look forward to building on this momentum and continuing our efforts to scale impact with purpose and discipline.