October 1, 2015 – Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/1LQ9OWA.
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Impact investment will be huge, but not necessarily good, says Transform Finance co-founder and Board Chair Morgan Simon, who is passionate about using Money to create social justice. Investors controlling $550 million have signed on to her program, she says.
“Microfinance leading to huge debt cycles. Wind farms causing land grabs,” are signs of the problem, she says. “ Impact investment is seen as a panacea to the challenges of aid and Philanthropy, yet its promise is often unrealized, lacking engagement with and accountability to the people it is intended to serve, at times even harming its intended beneficiaries. Expected to eclipse aid by 10x with over $500B, the field needs principled course-correction to maximize its transformative potential for hundreds of millions of people.”
Transform Finance offers three programs designed to help impact investors course-correct:
1. Converting impact investors into social justice advocates: We help investors (Family offices, foundations etc.) managing $556 million integrate the TF approach through our Investor Network launched at the White House in 2014. We co-develop tools to deepen impact and ensure accountability, stronger, more relevant metrics, and shared-benefit deal structures.
2. Working with accelerators worldwide to empower entrepreneurs to maximize community benefit: we “train the trainers” to ensure community accountability and shared ownership as common practice.
3. Helping social justice leaders leverage the power of finance: to keep investments accountable as they flow into their communities, and to generate their own revenue-building activity. Our initial trainings of 65 leaders in U.S. serving over 5 million individuals are being replicated from Mexico to Haiti as the only of this kind.
Simon has a clear vision to go along with her passion for impact Investing done according by her standard. “Transform Finance creates a world where impact investment lives up to its transformative potential. Our multi-stakeholder work ensures that investors deploy capital in the real interest of communities, and that communities can take advantage of finance as a critical tool for social change.”
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