With more than $1 trillion in impact investing assets under management, investors are demanding better impact data. “Investors need clear, consistent, and comparable information on both the positive and negative impacts of companies,” said Omidyar Network’s Chris Jurgens.

The Tipping Point Fund on Impact Investing, backed by Omidyar and other donors, is backing 16 organizations to improve the comparability, standardization and disclosure of an investment’s impacts. 

It’s often forgotten that the organisations we rely on to coordinate and develop impact frameworks and standards are not-for-profits. They need the support of the industry to grow and flourish. Which is where Tipping Point Fund on Impact Investing comes in. 

Tipping Point Fund is a donor collaborative committed to driving the harmonisation of impact frameworks, and developing data infrastructure, to help catalyse growth in the sector. 

The US-based fund (TPF) has announced $US3.2 million in grants to 16 organisations. They operate across the spectrum of impact measurement, data infrastructure and frameworks. All focussed on scaling impact. 

Charitable foundations want asset managers to start funding the data, measurement tools and frameworks that support the impact investment industry. Eleven foundations and family offices, including Rockefeller, Ford and the Omidyar Network, recently granted a total of $3.3 million to impact data and measurement organisations via the Tipping Point Fund on Impact Investing, a grant-making organisation for the impact investment industry.

“It’s really the duty of the private sector who are using these tools to deploy money to help support it, ” said Fran Seegull, executive director of TPF. “We see these announcements coming quite often now of multi-billion dollar funds, fund assets gathering around ESG, climate and impact.”

Many impact investing experts agree that the sector can’t become a mainstream powerhouse until it produces standardized, vetted methods for impact data availability, metrics and measurement. Not that sexy, but crucial infrastructure for expansion of the field. With that in mind, the Tipping Point Fund on Impact Investing (TPF) just announced it’s awarding about $3.3 million in grants to 16 organizations working on related projects.

Sixteen organisations have received a total of $3.3m in grants from the Tipping Point Fund on Impact Investing (TPF) to back their work to improve impact reporting, in the fund’s largest grant cycle to date.

TPF is a donor collaborative vehicle (where multiple donors coordinate resources to advance a common cause) which aims to grow the impact investing market without diluting its purpose. It was created in December 2019 with an initial $14m in philanthropic capital.

The Tipping Point Fund on Impact Investing (TPF) will award 16 organisations - including CDP, the Global Impact Investing Network and the Climate Disclosure Standards Board - $3.3m in combined grants to improve data, metrics and measurement in impact investing. Set up in 2019 with $14m in philanthropic seed funding, TPF seeks to scale credible impact investment. PolicyLink, another non-profit to secure a TPF grant, will develop an ‘investor blueprint for racial equality’. The Shareholder Commons will use its grant to look at corporate behavioural change and value creation based on ‘double materiality’. BlueMark will publish a report on impact performance assurance, while Ceres will develop a protocol for such assurance. The Predistribution Initiative will lead the creation of a Taskforce on Inequality-related Financial Disclosures. B-Lab will develop new performance requirements for B Corps. C4i will explore stronger assurance of ESG data for corporate reporting, and ICM will produce resources for private investors on impact.

As the market for impact investments grows, “so too must the metrics, tools, and platforms used to measure and disclose impact to different stakeholder groups,” says the Tipping Point Fund on Impact Investing’s Fran Seegull, who also heads the U.S. Impact Investing Alliance. The fund awarded $3.3 million in grants to 16 organizations to develop and promote impact standards, verification, evidence and other impact management infrastructure.