This post, hear from Co-Founder and Chief Impact Officer, Tom Dawkins, as he reflects on some out and about activities.
What do we mean by “impact investing for the rest of us”?
Earlier this week, I represented LendForGood at a Climate Action Week Sydney event called Impact Investing for the Rest of Us, alongside CEO of equity crowdfunding platform Birchal and former co-founder of Future Super Kirstin Hunter and Regen Labs cofounder Dr Dimity Podger, facilitated by StartSomeGood General Manager Caitlyn Touzell.
It was a great discussion, exploring different examples and approaches to engaging more people in impact investing – the act of directing resources based at least in part on the social and environmental outcomes you want to see in the world.
One of the things we talked about was the different ways you could define “the rest of us.”
Is it about the 1% vs the 99%? Or “sophisticated investors” vs “retail investors”, or institutions vs individuals?
Regardless of the definition, they all share a key characteristic: it’s about opening up impact investing from something only a few people do to something that is easy, accessible and mainstream.
Three main ways to do this were explored:
– using existing financial flows – eg. Superannuation
– opening up access via online platforms – eg. LendForGood, Birchal
– building communities of passionate investors around specific themes and geographies – eg. the work of Regen Labs for local communities and First Australians Capital for Indigenous business.
I was struck by something Dimity said, that local community investors don’t need to do “due diligence” in the usual way because they have a strong intuitive sense of the value a given business provides to their community, or what their community needs.
This intuition isn’t random; it’s based on deep experience and speaks to things that really matter, like the kind of community they want to be part of.
I realised that when we talk about “the rest of us” this isn’t just about the “rest of society”, beyond the ultra-wealthy and traditional investors, it’s about using “the rest of us,” beyond pure rational/left-brain decision-making.
Traditional investment isn’t allowed to use these refined human tools of decision-making.
This is an inherent artefact of being responsible for investing other people’s money. You have to be able to justify to them what you did, which generally means it needs to make sense on a spreadsheet. The “numbers need to work.” This means anything that can’t be turned into a number is ignored or, at best, a secondary consideration.
But this isn’t how we make decisions for ourselves.
For the things that really matter to us – when buying a home, rather than a property investment for instance – we don’t limit it to the numbers. The feelings matter too. Our intuition is involved. That’s why you need to visit a house you’re thinking of living in, walk around, and “see how it feels.”
Like the feeling of a home, impacts and values can never be fully captured by or reduced to numbers.
They’re not generic but personal. They reflect our life experiences, our perspectives, our hopes and aspirations.
This is why at LendForGood we believe that democratising impact investment, giving everyone access to vetted deals to then make their own decision, and in so doing to bring all of themselves – including values and beliefs – to that decision, is the key to unlocking the potential of the social enterprise movement.
Our community so far is a mix of individuals and institutions, including family offices and self-managed investment funds. But what they are all looking for, and what LendForGood provides, is the opportunity to go deal-by-deal, ensuring that the enterprises they invest with match their own investment thesis, impact priorities, risk tolerance and timeframes, with the option to invest as little as $500.
You are invited to join “the rest of us” in investing this way.
LendForGood is a crowdlending platform and global community of individuals and organisations collaborating to mobilise millions in impact capital for courageous impact enterprises.
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