Do you want to learn more about impact investing – investing in companies, organizations, and funds with the intention of creating beneficial social or environmental impact alongside financial return?
We research impact investment opportunities under the supervision of influential Harvard Business School Professors, HBS students and leading companies in the impact investing space. Each student team works on a specific project over the course of the semester.
Harvard Business School Fellowship
Last year our team did research on the growing trend of NPOs starting their own Impact Investing fund. Our data set so far consists of 150 screened NPOs (e.g. WWF) of which we picked 20 to look at more closely and identify the best investment strategies, management setup, key performance indicators, main challenges in the field etc. The project and goal of this semester is to take the data set and conduct a survey, carried out via telephone interviews, with the NPOs’ funds in order to publish an HBS Note (10 page research paper) which should serve as a guideline for board members and other investors who want to start a similar fund.
Innovation Fellowship - Energetic Insurance
In this innovations fellowship, our team is working with Boston start-up Energetic Insurance to assess the impact of solar insurance. Currently, most C&I electricity off-takers are unrated or below investment grade, which severely limits their ability to get financing for solar projects. When financing is even possible, the process can be grueling, leaving investors waiting for years to see a return. A huge market hasn’t been able to access capital for solar energy upgrades because of these hurdles. Energetic Insurance hopes to change that.
Innovation Fellowship - Stride
Stride Funding provides Income Share Agreements as an alternative to student loans. An Income Share Agreement, or an ISA, is an agreement where a student receives an upfront payment for tuition and, in return, agrees to pay a percentage of their income for a set number of payments, ensuring that students can always afford their payments by basing them on a percentage of income rather than a fixed payment amount. Stride has attracted capital from impact investors in order to increase the presence of ISAs in social impact fields that traditionally lack education investment (such as non-profit management, social work, and teaching degrees). Using a similar approach, the public sector has seen the development of outcome-based financing mechanisms such as social bonds to attract private / impact capital to programs with broader societal goals. In this fellowship, students will survey the outcomes-based financing market as a whole, and will work directly with Stride to create a comprehensive summary of the impact investing market, make a recommendation for potential partnerships with philanthropies/foundations/impact investment funds based on research, and develop a pitch model for investors.
Avivar Capital Fellowship
Avivar Capital is a U.S.-based investment advisor focused exclusively on assisting institutional, public and private clients in the design, development and execution of impact investing strategies, portfolios and funds. The fellowship team will work closely with the firm to support research efforts in the first phase of the ‘Bridging Capital Barriers’ project – identifying and addressing the specific social issue of racial disparity in fund management. Over the course of the semester our team aims to tackle two central questions to help contextualize the issue at hand: (1) how does the current landscape quantifiably disadvantage black fund managers?, and (2) what are the consistent levers (if any) that drive outsized performance?
