If a state wanted capital to flow to organizations focused on improving its communities, natural environment and economy, it could consider a conference to connect impact investors and entrepreneurs.
In fact, CO Impact Days, held earlier this month in Denver, could be the template.
More than 200 accredited investors, as well as 50 foundation representatives, family office personnel and financial advisors attended the groundbreaking event, which organizers hailed as the first-ever statewide conference, marketplace and showcase for impact investing. The agenda included activities ranging from workshops for investors, to a marketplace where investors could visit booths set up by entrepreneurs, to a public showcase of pitches by capital-hungry Colorado impact ventures.
Despite being a state-centric event, impact power players from as far away as both coasts and Texas attended.
“Hopefully, this conference will serve as a model. I hope it’s replicable in a number of other key markets, where there are enough investors, social ventures and intermediaries,” said Justin Conway, a vice president at Calvert Foundation, one of the event’s sponsors.
Field Of Dreams
CO Impact Days is part of the larger CO Impact Initiative, a three-year strategy to channel $100 million of investment capital into for-profit and not-for-profit enterprises and funds in Colorado. The initiative originated at the Impact Finance Center, a partnership between the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business and the Sustainable Endowments Institute, a special project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. The center’s mission is to advance the field of impact investing by providing research, education and guidance to high-net-worth individuals, family offices, foundations and corporations.
The founder of the Impact Finance Center, Stephanie Gripne, described CO Impact Days as a “Field of Dreams,” referring to the 1989 film starring Kevin Costner. After hearing a voice say, “If you build it, he will come,” Costner’s character stakes his personal wealth to fulfill a dream—building a baseball diamond in an Iowa cornfield to bring back to life players from the 1919 Black Sox Scandal era, including Shoeless Joe Jackson.
Gripne believed so much in CO Impact Days’ potential that she started the year with only a $50,000 gift and committed $400,000 of her own money to the event, hoping to recoup her expenses though registration fees, philanthropic support from foundations and individuals and sponsorship fees from U.S. Trust, Merrill Lynch, PAX World Investments and others. Over 500 tickets were sold.
Colorado investors have over $1 billion they’re seeking to invest, according to Gripne. She aims to help individuals and institutions direct 10 percent of that into impact enterprises and funds over the next three years.
“The Impact Finance Center’s work extends far beyond Colorado. It’s part of the infrastructure of the impact space, and few states have anything like it,” said Holmes Hummel, founder of Clean Energy Works, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization that accelerates investment in sustainable energy solutions.
Less Than Zero
Beyond addressing significant social and environmental challenges, Gripne advocated against bifurcating resources into “donations” and “investments,” which have the potential for a positive rate of return.
“We invite you to let go of the words ‘investor,’ ‘grant’ and ‘donation’ and start more holistically looking at your resources in terms of financial return, impact, risk and liquidity,” she told conference attendees.
For example, rather than giving a donation, an investor could make a low-interest loan to an impact venture at 1 percent interest. That’s 101 percent better for the investor than the negative 100 percent return on a gift. It could also save the venture a substantial amount of money compared to the cost of a market-rate loan. And even a small positive return for the impact investor, compared to the total loss associated with a gift, could generate more impact in the long run by growing the amount of capital the investor can redeploy into additional impact deals.
Gripne isn’t against grants or donations–indeed CO Impact Days and Initiative relies on grants and donations. She just wants investors to consider restructuring existing loans, lines of credit and mortgages to provide savings for ventures, while increasing financial returns to investors.
Back To The Future
At the pre-conference workshops, investors heard presentations on a variety of topics, such as investing through endowment portfolios, choosing the best legal structure for startups and evaluating term sheets.
During the first day of the conference, attendees participated in one of two sessions on evaluating direct impact investments. Investors received detailed due diligence reports on Silvernest, a for-profit roommate matching service for baby boomers and empty nesters that have, or need, a home to share, and the Emily Griffith Foundation, a nonprofit that’s developing a mixed-use, mixed-income housing project in downtown Denver. The principals pitched their ventures, then left the room while investors discussed the pros and cons of each investment.
The next day, investors could visit booths to speak privately with 60 Colorado impact entrepreneurs chosen from a field of over 280 projects, for-profits, nonprofits and funds that applied to participate. Signup sheets at each booth allowed investors to get introduced directly to the ventures’ principals or to other interested investors with whom they could share due diligence.
Colorado resident Kimbal Musk (brother of Tesla Motors and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk) delivered the keynote presentation on his work building “Learning Gardens” in schools to help students improve their vegetable intake. Kimbal Musk is the co-founder of The Kitchen Community, a group of restaurants that sources directly from local farmers.
Next year, conference organizers plan to scale the event to introduce investors to others who want to share due diligence and co-invest. In 2018, the event will explore fund opportunities and expand to other states in the Rocky Mountain region.
“That will lead to the deals, and the investment deals will lead to impact,” Hummel said.
