Mar 11: 9:45-10:30
Location: Marco Polo
CO Impact Days Meets Opportunity Zones
Dr. Stephanie Gripne, Founder and CEO, Impact Finance Center, CO Impact Days and Impact Investing Institute
Impact Finance Center Background
Thank you for the opportunity to better inform you about Impact Finance Center (IFC), CO Impact Days, Impact Investing Institute and our plans to scale, replicate, and create the National Impact Investing Marketplace. Just as Accelerators such as TechStars, Village Capital, or 500 Startups identify, educate, and invest in entrepreneurs, Impact Finance Center is an Accelerator for individuals and organizations who want to become impact investors, through a process of identification, education, and activation. IFC was founded in 2012 and is a nonprofit academic center that forms partnerships with academic institutions. Founded in 2015, IFC’s flagship initiative, CO Impact Days and Impact Investing Institute, a three-year effort to catalyze $100M of investment in social ventures and is the first-ever statewide marketplace for impact investing and Phase 1 of the National Impact Investing Marketplace. Since inception, we completed over 170 presentations and courses to over 5,000 participants as part of CO Impact Institute and CO Impact Days 2016 and 2017 together showcased more than 150 social ventures, connecting them to mentors, partners, and impact investment capital. We are embarking on a formal evaluation of direct, indirect, and community successes from 2015-17. Early estimates indicate that 258 direct impact investments of $201M have been completed in addition to upgrading the governance of several asset owners.
How do we create the National Impact Investing Marketplace? We do it by scaling CO Impact Days and Impact Investing Institute to a regional Rocky Mountain Impact Days and Impact Investing Institute while replicating it throughout the U.S to develop six regional marketplaces.
We have all the pieces of the puzzle on the table. Now we need to scale and commercialize the solution. Our goal is to create the National Impact Investing Marketplace by 2030. Our strategy is simple.
We need to identify, educate, and activate more impact investors faster and more efficiently
We create a financially self-sustaining model
The three tactics will use to achieve that will be:
Develop a social enterprise model for Impact Finance Center (IFC), CO Impact Days, and Impact Investing Institute that will result in a financially self-sustaining social enterprise. We plan to develop a sliding scale solution that will be a white label our existing 30+ impact investing courses and then sell them for low cost to associations such as community foundations and philanthropic supporting organizations.
Launch pilot Impact Investing Giving Circles, a critical part of Impact Investing Institute that will identify, educate, and activate more impact investors at scale.
Expand the Outsourced Chief Investment Advisor and Outsource Impact Investing Department Impact Lab models to provide curriculum, education, and technical assistance for higher education institutions, community foundations, and other asset owners.
You can read how it fits into our national vision that was published in the Foundation Review ”Laying the Groundwork of the National Impact Investing Marketplace,” which builds off of the Forbes article.