Economic Opportunity is one of our three key investment focus areas. Last month's newsletter focused on our environmental portfolio, and the month prior we zoomed in on health. We think of EO as improving educational outcomes and equity as well as improving access to higher quality jobs and affordable essential services, including financial products and housing.
Our EO portfolio includes 25 public investments ranging from companies like professional language learning platform Slang to student loan management platform Candidly to the innovative house-hacking startup PadSplit. This month to complete our summer spotlight series, we'll highlight news from some of our Economic Opportunity portfolio investments.
Fund Fire recently interviewed Impact Engine Chief Investment Officer Priya Parrish on the state of impact funds in 2023.
“Impact can be measured from day one based on what their strategy is and what their goals on impact are,” she says. “You don’t have to wait 10 years on that – what’s happening today? Impact managers should have some pretty good answers.”
Some of the Economic Opportunity stories we've been following this month:
Yale Insights | Did Student Loan Forbearance Push Distressed Borrowers Further into Debt?
Rahul Bhide, Senior Associate for Economic Opportunity writes: "Really interesting, albeit discouraging, research here, with some key implications on understanding the current level of pressure on the financial lives of distressed borrowers, particularly with student loan payments re-starting in October. This is not new, but the research also in some sense demonstrates how current credit score models are not necessarily reflective of the strength of the individual borrower, often under- or over-estimating based on the current inputs."
New York Times Magazine | What ‘The Bear’ Gets Right About Chicago
IE Partner Tasha Seitz says: "I loved this article describing Chicago, especially the closing paragraph. It just seems so spot on, and also relevant to Impact Engine’s culture!”
Accelero, the early childhood education provider operating Head Start centers, partnered with Fathers365, a Philadelphia-based group of Black fathers to provide 1,300 books to preschoolers in economically-disadvantaged neighborhoods. “We want early literacy to become an everyday topic,” said group co-founder Brent Johnstone. “We want to make sure we put books in kids’ hands.”
Climb, the career ladder education hub, was named one of America's fastest-growing companies in 2023 by the Financial Times. "As more people look to skills-based training to advance in careers and meet workforce needs, our mission to expand access to these types of programs is more important than ever," says Casey Powers, CEO of Climb.
Dandi, the DEI intelligence and analytics platform for businesses, was given Fast Company's 2023 Innovation by Design Award. "The tool is easy to customize to focus on different data sets and has an intuitive interface, enabling management and HR to gain real-time insights into compensation and representation by gender, ethnicity, disability status, and other variables," Fast Company says.
ReUp Education, the higher ed re-enrollment solution, shared impressive results from its partnership with Lehigh Carbon Community College, a school in eastern Pennsylvania. ReUp leveraged its personalized coaching support and data analytics solution to bring 628 stopped-out students back to campus, resulting in $2.13 million in tuition recovered – significant numbers for a rural community college with 13,000 students.