You can’t realize your rights in a capitalist system without economic power. It’s a lesson that Global Impact Investment Network (GIIN) co-founder Antony Bugg-Levine learned working in human rights, and it drives his lifelong effort to leverage private capital toward social good.
At The Rockefeller Foundation, Bugg-Levine helped galvanize the movement that would come to be known as “impact investing”—investments generating positive social or environmental outcomes and a financial return. The term was coined at a Bellagio Center convening that led to the launch of the GIIN.
The movement that found shape in that convening has grown into a major social and economic force. Today, more than $1.6 trillion in impact assets are under management worldwide, creating returns for investors while funding a better future for people, communities, and the planet.
What led you to become involved in impact investing, even before it had that name?
There isn’t enough money in philanthropy and government to solve the problems they need to address at scale. If 2 billion people need a decent home, and a home housing five people costs $50,000, that’s $20 trillion. If we’re serious about taking on big challenges, we have to harness private investment capital.
When I came to The Rockefeller Foundation, they asked me to write a review of The Rockefeller Foundation’s early experiment in using venture capital and other investments to address problems. I wanted to understand who else was following this path. It turned out that lots of people—scattered around foundations, big investment firms, banks, and other places—were trying this approach, so I began cold-calling anyone who might be doing this kind of work. Once, someone asked me in the cafeteria what I was working on, and my colleague with the office next to mine answered for me. She’d heard me do so many phone calls that she’d memorized my pitch.
People went into the convening saying ‘I’m a microfinance investor. I’m an affordable housing investor. I’m a green investor.’ We came out of it with this recognition that we were part of the same movement.
Antony Bugg-LevineCo-founderThe Global Impact Investing Network
What happened in the first Bellagio Center convening?
The central question was “How do we get investors to put their money into taking on social problems?” To turn this idea into action, we had to start by asking investors directly: what would they need to get on board?
The participants came from very different places. Someone from an American nonprofit community loan fund. A senior JP Morgan Chase executive. A private banker from Switzerland. A billionaire from Hong Kong. One guy from the west coast wanted to fundamentally change capitalism and orient all investments toward social problems, while someone from China thought capital markets were the most efficient allocators of resources, but wanted to unlock money for things that have high impact.
We didn’t announce before the convening that the movement was going to be one direction or the other. We got them in the same room, talked it out, and found common ground. The participants didn’t realize that they were already part of the same movement. By different paths, they had all come to one mountaintop, using private investment to achieve public good. This first gathering was about showing them they had affinity and alignment.
They drove the outcomes. Our guy from JP Morgan Chase said, “I have researchers who crunch numbers to prove whether investments are successful, but I don’t have a way to measure social impact.” That led to a working group on identifying standards. Another group wanted to build an investment collaborative. A third group looked at creating a recurring space to have conversations and forge relationships. The most important session might be the breakout where we asked what we should call the convening group. That was where the term “impact investing” was coined.
Participants committed to becoming the founding members of what eventually became GIIN. So I said, “I need you to sign up for working groups. The Rockefeller Foundation will staff them, and we’ll come back in six or nine months to review your progress.” That way you hold everyone accountable. Otherwise, meetings generate a lot of goodwill, then people go back to their day jobs.
Another key factor was the Bellagio Center itself. It’s so singular in its location and history that even someone who is a billionaire and can go to any hotel in the world is going to want to come to a convening. The informal conversations at the Bellagio Center—over drinks, at meals, on walks—all were as meaningful as anything in the formal presentation.
What do you see as the legacy of those early convenings?
The biggest legacy is the phrase “impact investing,” and the shared understanding it created. People went into the convening saying, “I’m a microfinance investor. I’m an affordable housing investor. I’m a green investor.” We came out of it with this recognition that we were part of the same movement. Today, private equity funds and investment banks have multibillion-dollar impact investing funds. You can connect a line between coining that phrase at the Bellagio Center and the ability of this industry to coalesce the way it has.
Participants saw that first convening as the beginning of a conversation. The GIIN was born from a desire to create a space where investors could come together and talk about using private capital to solve social problems—and it’s still making a difference. Today, it has more than 50 staff members and holds an annual convening that brings in thousands of people from 150 countries.
Many initial attendees wound up moving into important impact investing roles. So we seeded great leadership in the field just from the people at the convening and the networks that grew around it.
What is top of mind when you think about the future of impact investing?
Impact investing wasn’t meant to be measured by the number of Google search hits or dollars that self-identify as impactful. It’s about solving social and environmental problems. We still have to directly link impact investing to solutions and show how people’s lives have been improved.
There has been a lot of progress on intermediary steps—bringing people together, giving them language, getting talented people into this work. But I don’t think we have yet had the social impact we hoped to make. We’ve laid the groundwork, but what I care most about isn’t giving people a way to feel better about how they make money. It’s about solving social problems. So there’s still much to do.
Looking back, Bugg-Levine feels the most powerful result of that first convening may be the sense of common purpose it forged among those who took part. “You had people of different perspectives and backgrounds looking across the room and connecting, saying ‘I believe we are part of the same thing.’”
Learn More:
- Read a look back at the GIIN’s early years from the Bellagio Center archves.
- Check out the GIIN’s impact investing research library.