Over the course of 2016, The Philanthropic Initiative (TPI) conducted a landscape scan, including interviews with more than 40 advocates, investors, and advisors on the issues and opportunities around women and impact investing. The research goals were to better understand women’s interest and behavior around impact investing, highlight approaches that have successfully engaged women, and explore new ideas for galvanizing women’s leadership and participation in impact investing. The research findings, summarized in this report, suggest a significant opportunity exists for accelerating the development of the impact investing ecosystem through an intentional and coordinated focus on engaging affluent and high net worth women. This has led to the creation of the initiative called Women Leading the Way in Impact Investing.
The ultimate goal of this project is to significantly increase the amount of capital dedicated by women and men to impact investing – resulting in an expansion of sustainable capital to address the most pressing social and environmental issues worldwide. We believe the time is right for an initiative focused on affluent and high net worth women who are naturally drawn to investing with their values, poised to control an increasing share of societal wealth, and facing a range of highly surmountable obstacles to deploying that wealth for social good.
If you or your organization are interested in working as part of a coalition that will share best practices, bring in needed resources and additional actors, and support the leadership team in this effort to grow and strengthen women’s leadership in the impact investing ecosystem please contact Ellen Remmer, TPI Senior Partner at eremmer@tpi.org.
UPDATE: In January 2019, this initiative launched Invest for Better, a new collaborative campaign focused on increasing women’s use of impact investing. Learn more here.