Accountability: The Golden Opportunity in Impact Investing

During coffee breaks at the past two annual Social Capital Markets (SOCAP) conferences, I’ve asked dozens of impact investors: Do you evaluate and mitigate the risk of social or environmental harm that your investments might cause?

By and large, they all say “no.” And given their focus on scaling up positive solutions to global problems, perhaps that’s not surprising. But it’s also not good. While impact investors rightly focus on positive investment returns, they should also be on the lookout for the social and environmental harm that their investments might cause—because in the final analysis, some of those investments do more harm than good. If impact investors adopted a stronger focus on rights-based development and accountability, they could make better decisions and improve their impact…

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