Social investment and impact investing
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Social investment and impact investment
We are at a pivotal moment in which social and economic inequalities are increasing and the climate and biodiversity crises are deepening. How and where we invest has a significant impact on these social and environmental challenges and it can contribute to the problems or solutions.
To ensure this impact is positive, we work with investors, organisations, policymakers, and individuals to release the positive potential of the investment system. Since 2012, NPC has worked with foundations, family offices and impact investors by supporting strategy development, impact due diligence for investments, portfolio-level impact measurement, monitoring and reporting.
Find out how we can help you
Whether you’re a charity, funder or social enterprise, we can offer you tailored support from NPC.
Please get in touch with our impact investment team, Gurmeet Kaur, Principal: Impact Investing and David Neaum, Senior Consultant: Impact Investing, as soon as possible to discuss your best options.
Support we provide
Systems mapping
Systems mapping to identify opportunities where impact investing can effectively be integrated in understanding key social issues.
Strategy development
Strategy development and landscape analysis to identify opportunities for integrating investments with a potential to deliver impact in key areas of interest.
Impact investing allocation strategies
Impact investing allocation strategies to find the right balance between impact and financial returns.
Impact measurement and management
Impact due diligence and ongoing impact management support for fund managers and investors.
Impact capacity building
Impact capacity building to enable your organisation to undertake due diligence, provide impact support and undertake impact reporting.
Impact evaluations
Impact evaluations to support organisations to identify opportunities for further learning from their impact investment programs.
Impact support for organisations
Impact support for organisations including, strategy, theory of change, impact management, impact data and metrics.
Who we work with
Asset owners and foundations
We work with asset owners and foundations to identify strategies to integrate impact investments towards meeting their philanthropic goals, including approaches to improve impact.
Charities and social businesses
We support charities and social businesses in identifying opportunities to raise impact investments to support their expansion and growth plans.
Investors and investees
We work with investors and investees on supporting impact due diligence, impact measurement and management to identify opportunities for improvement and learning through supporting best practices.
MacArthur Foundation
NPC are the learning and evaluation partner for the Catalytic Capital Consortium (C3) led by the MacArthur Foundation. C3 is an investment, learning, and market development initiative bringing together leading impact investors to encourage greater impact and use of catalytic capital.
Rethink
NPC are working with the national mental health charity Rethink Mental Illness as a systems change partner to support a programme of work to increase the amount of quality supported accommodation for people with severe mental illness.
SIS Ventures
NPC are the impact partner for Social Investment Scotland Ventures. Since 2018, NPC have provided SIS Ventures with external impact support, in setting up an impact due diligence, measurement, and management system and supporting the development of in-house capacity.
Featured resources on social investment and impact investing
Resources
Is good impact practice associated with strong impact performance?
Why impact investors and the impact investment industry need better and more transparent data.
Blog
Why rigorous impact due diligence is important for impact venture funds
A conversation between David Neaum, Senior Consultant in Impact Investing at NPC and Lindsay Wake, Head of Impact at Social Investment Scotland.
Blog
The future of blended finance and affordable loans for charities
NPC have been awarded the tender to produce an independent review for the government on the future of subsidy for blended finance. What is subsidy for blended finance?
Impact investment services
Systems mapping
Finding solutions to complex social issues often requires creative thinking about where and how funding and financing fits into the system.
We can help you understand the systems you are looking to change, including where and how funding and financing interacts with other elements in the system, where there are opportunities for investment, and what potential solutions there may be for deploying blended finance or concessionary capital to create systems that yield beneficial outcomes for all their stakeholders.
Strategy development and landscape analysis
Impact investing strategies at a portfolio level often benefit from a landscape analysis of thematic areas of interest to learn where different kinds of financial support can have the most impact.
It can help identify charities, start-ups, early-stage ventures, and more mature companies within a sector who are working to deliver the impact you want to support.
Impact investing allocation strategies
It is increasingly important to grant making trusts and foundations to consider impact across their whole portfolio of investing and grant-making activities.
We can help you develop your impact strategy alongside your asset manager, helping you to decide what percentage to allocate to impact, where you can use investing to catalyse impact, and how your grant making strategies relate to your investment strategies.
Impact measurement and management
Impact due diligence is an important part of impact investing, and many fund managers or foundations seeking to make direct investments don’t have the capacity, frameworks, or technical expertise to do this themselves.
We can offer this service, providing you with end-to-end impact partnership support with the added benefit of the additional impact assurance that third party expertise can provide.
Impact evaluations
Market building or change initiatives that seek to influence the sector are best implemented with experienced learning and evaluation partners that can help provide the strategic guidance to develop your theory of change.
We can support your feedback for ongoing learning, support with data collection, provide an evaluation of initiative based on that data, and report on the initiative’s effectiveness and can offer this service throughout the design and delivery of your initiative.
Impact support for organisations
Impact investees, particularly early-stage investees, often benefit from impact support tailored to their stage of growth. This can flow from the due diligence process or can be stand-alone.
It may be support developing their theory of change or identifying what outcomes they are going to measure and how. It may be help with impact reporting or impact capacity building. We can offer this support proportionate to need.
Impact investment support
If you would benefit from professional support on your next social investment or impact investment project, NPC's team can help.
