CHICAGO, March 10, 2020 — On Monday, March 9 at its 8th annual Chicago Impact Investing Showcase, Impact Engine hosted a lineup of conversations and presentations with seven impact leaders in the Chicago community. The theme of the night was Impact Engine’s “5P Framework” - which denotes Place, People, Product, Process, and Paradigm - and illustrates the various ways a business or fund strategy can create impact. Each speaker addressed how their organization is focused on one or more of the 5Ps.

Rodrigo Garcia, the Deputy Treasurer and Chief Investment Office for The Illinois Treasurer’s Office, kicked things off by speaking to the important role that the State of Illinois’ place-based impact work plays in uplifting its constituents. Patti Doyle, the CEO of Rumi Spice, described how Rumi is unlocking the growth potential of workers in Afghanistan by incentivizing farmers to switch over from growing poppy seeds in their fields to growing spices like saffron and cumin, in turn providing jobs to thousands of Afghan women.

Dorri McWhorter, the CEO of YWCA Metropolitan Chicago, spoke about how their WOMN ETF enables people-based impact as a women’s empowerment Exchange Traded Fund and allows more investors to align their money with their values. On the product side, Danielle Hrzic and Jason Weedon, the co-founders of Gourmet Gorilla, described how a problem they encountered as parents trying to find quality meals for their young son sparked an idea for a business that is now producing over 40,000 healthy, local and sustainable meals per day.

Process-based impact is created through a company’s management process and was illustrated by Mike Evans, CEO of Fixer, a certified B Corp that hires and trains underrepresented applicants in the skilled trades. Fixer’s handymen and handywomen are full-time W2 employees who receive great benefits like health insurance, paid family leave, and an equity stake in the company; a rarity in the industry.

Joan Spirytus, Managing Associate at Next Street, spoke about the paradigm shift required in order to tackle the equity capital gap for entrepreneurs of color, who receive less than 1% of all venture capital funding in Chicago. Dr. Helene Gayle, the President and CEO of the Chicago Community Trust, shared the work the Trust is doing to help diversify the money managers who invest their donor-advised funds and endowment funds, and how they are working to add more impact investing options for donor-advised funds.

Impact Engine also presented a summary of the current Chicago impact investing landscape. The findings come from a broad scan of the Chicago impact investing industry, and was done with the support of Loyola’s Baumhart Scholars MBA program and the Rustandy Center for Social Sector Innovation at University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.

The Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) defines impact investments as investments made with the intention to generate positive, measurable social and environmental impact alongside a financial return. This landscape view includes all firms* with strategies demonstrating that intentionality, including ESG funds that have active engagement with management such as proxy voting. Some firms have impact metrics already in place and others are actively working on or considering metrics for the future. In total, 36 impact investing funds were identified and submitted information on their work through an email or phone survey. Of those, 27 reported that they currently measure and report on impact.

The earliest firms with impact strategies in Chicago began to crop up in the 1980’s, but the majority are relatively new: 12 of the 36 firms formed or began investing with impact in just the last four years. The total amount invested to date by impact investors in Chicago exceeds $10 billion**. Other interesting facts include:

49% of firms are venture capital or private equity-focused and 26% are debt-focused
Only 14% of the firms focus on public equities, but that represents 51% of capital deployed
83% of the firms surveyed are aiming to meet or exceed market-rate financial returns
In terms of geographic focus, approximately 17% of the respondents focus solely on the greater Chicago area, while over 28% have an international focus.
People-based and product-based impact strategies were tied as most cited “Ps” in the Impact Engine 5P’s framework, with 58% of respondents each.

Jessica Droste Yagan, CEO of Impact Engine, added: “Chicago was home to some of the earliest impact investors in the form of Community Development Finance Institutions and we continue to see leaders emerge here. I don’t think most people realize how much is happening here and how strong the momentum is today; we are pleased to share some of our findings to date about the sector in Chicago, and look forward to input from others on what we may have missed.”

The field of impact investing in Chicago has come a long way in the past 30 years. We are encouraged by all the momentum that has built up in recent years and we look forward to seeing where the industry is headed in the future!

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*This survey focused only on funds and intermediaries. While there are multiple private foundations active in impact investing, such as the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation which has deployed over $600 million in impact investments since 1983, they were outside the scope of this exercise.

**This is a conservative amount, as not all firms reported the actual amount of impact investments they’ve made to date at the time of publishing.

Full List of Survey Participants:

548 Capital

Abundant Venture Partners

Chicago Booth Steven Tarrson Impact Investment Fund

Chicago Community Catalyst Fund

Chicago Community Loan Fund