Global Endowment Management
About
Global Endowment Management (GEM) is a leading outsourced Chief Investment Office (OCIO) that provides institutional investment capabilities for endowments, foundations and other long-term investors. Through its impact investment approach, GEM partners with its clients to ensure investments are aligned with their values. This drives positive outcomes across the investment value chain, often at the intersection of climate, justice, and gender equity. Its integrated approach enables GEM to leverage its position in the investment value chain to serve its clients, and to drive more just, sustainable outcomes for communities and the planet.
Approach
GEM considers and builds in climate and justice factors when assessing environmental impact, manager portfolios, and manager engagement. It recognises that frontline communities and women – Indigenous and Black women especially – experience disproportionately negative health outcomes and outsized harm from climate change. GEM also examines how these communities have many innovative solutions to the climate crisis that are often overlooked by investors, businesses, and policymakers.
Type of actor
Investor, OCIO
Investment type
Institutional investments for endowments, foundations, and other long-term investors
Operates in
United States
Sectors
Venture capital / Buyout / Public equities / Technology / Consumer / Real estate / Agriculture / Energy storage
“GEM’s impact measurement practice includes three foundational issues, cutting across all impact themes: Diversity, Equity, and Climate Change and Justice.”
GEM centres its approach to climate, justice and gender equity on representation from and investment in founders, managers, and community-led solutions from frontline communities. There is particular focus on Black and Indigenous communities. Examples include a Black-led venture capital firm that invests in startups that benefit the planet, and a woman-led fund that invests in women-led businesses that address challenges in women’s health and unsustainable production and consumption patterns.
GEM considers the complexity of climate and justice in traditionally harmful sectors. For example, GEM invests with a sustainable mining manager that explicitly considers risks to Indigenous communities, as well as to air, water, and land, in its ESG approach. The manager invests in several companies that leverage Indigenous partnerships to drive better outcomes.
One portfolio company engages significantly with Indigenous traditional landowners, leveraging land-share agreements, community-driven social development, stringent land oversight by community representatives, and a community-led oversight committee composed of Indigenous community members. The company then reports on some of these outcomes and initiatives to investors.
Impact
GEM adapted the Impact Management Project (IMP) framework to apply to all the firm’s investments. The firm invests primarily through third-party investment managers, and leverages a multistakeholder framework to measure impact in terms of:
the portfolio score to quantify the impact of portfolio companies on the five stakeholders, and the manager score to quantify the investment manager’s actions that contribute to positive outcomes and/or avoid negative outcomes for stakeholders.
the manager score to quantify the investment manager’s actions that contribute to positive outcomes and/or avoid negative outcomes for stakeholders.
GEM’s impact measurement practice includes three foundational issues, cutting across all impact themes: Diversity, Equity, and Climate Change and Justice. In 2019, GEM began developing racial and social equity lens frameworks that examine how capital is allocated, and who reaps the rewards of its allocation. Today, these frameworks are applied to all the firm’s investments. GEM’s social equity lens includes a gender lens framework, which examines how investments affect opportunities and outcomes for women. This lens focuses on women’s access to capital; investment in historically marginalised and excluded communities; and women’s representation at all levels of ownership and decision-making.
Key takeaways
By taking a multi-stakeholder approach, GEM is able to paint a more accurate picture of impact. By leveraging specific themes, including Justice, the fund can capture nuances and identify impacts that may be overlooked by traditional measurement categories.
What’s next?
GEM will continue to partner with its clients and with industry leaders to advance climate justice and gender and racial equity. For example, in 2022, GEM partnered with the Intentional Endowments Network (IEN) to publish Leading with Justice: Net Zero Investing & Conversations on Climate Justice. The paper does three things: provides a background and working definition of climate justice; argues that climate justice is central to reaching net-zero goals; and provides practical methods to implementing climate justice. GEM will continue to engage with like-minded organisations to serve its clients, advance equitable outcomes, and help drive a Just Transition.