The Tipping Point Fund on Impact Investing (TPF) Awards $1.14 Million in Grants to 8 Organizations Working to Improve Data, Metrics and Measurement

Grant recipients include Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs, AssuranceMark, Capitals Coalition, Intentional Endowments Network, International Foundation for Valuing Impacts, Shift, The Investment Integration Project, and XBRL International

The Tipping Point Fund on Impact Investing (TPF), a donor collaborative committed to supporting public goods that are critical to the continued growth of the impact investing market, announced today that it will award approximately $1.14 million in grants to a diverse cohort of organizations. These grantees are focused on enhancing impact data, metrics, and measurement to foster a more equitable and sustainable economic system.

“Impact transparency and impact accountability are essential ingredients for nudging our financial systems toward greater equity and sustainability,” said Fran Seegull, Executive Director of the TPF and President of the U.S. Impact Investing Alliance. “This round of grants supports work that will help ensure that companies, asset managers, asset owners, and other market stakeholders are held responsible for their social and environmental impacts.”

“As we evaluated the most pressing gaps in the market, we recognized the need to bring new perspectives and approaches towards challenges in how sustainability data is captured, analyzed, and reported to external stakeholders,” said Jessie Duncan, Senior Program Officer at the TPF. “Each grant recipient has a different area of expertise but collectively they share the goal of facilitating improved decision-making around urgent sustainability challenges.”

Each grant proposal was evaluated based on its potential contribution to one of three verticals that the TPF considers vital to the continued growth and success of the impact investing market:

  1. Advancing, consolidating, and fortifying the global sustainability disclosure agenda, with a special focus on advancing social and inequality-related factors

  2. Raising the bar by driving improved impact performance across asset classes and investor types

  3. Supporting the advancement of integrated accounting, including work to generate consensus around ways to value social and environmental impacts

Each grant recipient will use funding from the TPF to work on a specific project or deliverable. The full list of grant recipients and their projects is available below and on the TPF website.

  • AssuranceMark and Ceres – Ceres will partner with Samantha Ross, founder of AssuranceMark and a leading expert on impact assurance, to organize and host a series of discussions among investors, assurance providers, and regulators to drive consensus around a protocol for third-party assurance of ESG data, with the goal of improving the rigor, quality, and comparability of investor-grade climate data assurance in the U.S.

  • Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) – ANDE will develop guidance and case studies tailored to helping small and growing businesses (SGBs) comply with and navigate complex and evolving international corporate ESG reporting regulations.

  • Capitals Coalition – The Capitals Coalition will advance the work of the Value Commission. The Value Commission is composed of 30 Commissioners from around the world, including those who develop, provide, apply and regulate value factors that account for the value derived from natural, social, human, and financial capital. The Value Commission is developing the governance framework to ensure transparency and confidence of the valuation of impacts and dependencies on the capitals. The Governance Framework for Valuation outlines how methodological decisions should be disclosed and how they affect decision-makers’ confidence.

  • Intentional Endowments Network (IEN) – IEN will build on its recent work in developing an Endowment Impact Benchmark (EIB), a benchmarking and rating system to drive the adoption of commonly accepted impact standards by endowed institutions, by running a second pilot program targeting a larger group of endowment and foundation participants.

  • International Foundation for Valuing Impacts (IFVI) – IFVI will develop case studies and practitioner guides that showcase real-world applications of impact accounting across various sectors, geographies, and stakeholders, with the goal of building and scaling the practice of impact accounting to promote decision-making based on risk, return, and impact.

  • Shift – Shift will engage standard-setters, regulators, investors, and data providers to explore how findings from its recent research into meaningful social and inequality-related indicators and metrics can help secure higher-quality information from companies. This work aims to equip investors, business leaders, regulators and civil society with the tools to push to scale business practices that are in line with the principle of basic dignity and equality for all.

  • The Investment Integration Project (TIIP) – TIIP will build on its earlier evidence-building work by developing and sharing five case studies of first-mover investment teams integrating system-level investing and measuring their progress. This will help investors understand how to extend their investment practices to improve their positive impact on the social, financial, and environmental systems they rely on for short- and long-term performance as well as drive broader influence on the health of the economy and global prosperity.

  • XBRL International – XBRL International will work with securities regulators in low-income countries in Africa and Asia in order to help these regulators build skills, knowledge, and experience related to the management of the digitization of sustainability reporting.

About the Tipping Point Fund on Impact Investing

The Tipping Point Fund on Impact Investing (TPF) is a donor collaborative developed with the mission of supporting public goods that are critical to the continued growth and fidelity of the impact investing market. The funding provided by the TPF will build on existing field building efforts by prioritizing the areas that are chronically underfunded, are best suited for collective action and require additional support beyond that provided by individual grantmakers. Learn more at http://www.tpfii.org.