From GIIN - Resource library of different strategies to achieve gender impact.

From Financial Alliance for Women - A wide collection of how-to guides and case studies ranging from data analysis, market research, public policy, women’s market strategy, and more.

From the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN). The Navigating Impact Project is where the GIIN, together with experts in different investment themes, identify best practices, research, and recommended metrics for each investment theme. This will make sure they are relevant, practical, and set the standard for best practice. Once these resources have gone through the IRIS+ rigorous standards development process, they are uploaded into IRIS+ and made available to a wider audience.

Through the content provided, investors, enterprises, and other stakeholders in the impact investing ecosystem can explore Impact Themes such as Energy Access, Gender, Education, Sustainable Forestry, Sustainable Water Management, and others. Each of these Impact Themes includes a series of Strategic Goals that show common impact intentions that investors and enterprises may have within that space For example, under the Impact Theme on Smallholder Agriculture, Strategic Goals include “Improved Access to Training and Information,” “Improved Farm Profitability,” and “Improved Food Security,” among others.

Each Strategic Goal includes a research-based overview of the problem and how investments can work toward solutions, an evidence map, a starter kit of metrics that are shown to indicate progress toward that strategic goal, and curated resources that can help practitioners measure and manage their impact most effectively.

From Transform Finance. What would investment to communities look like if those very communities were part of the process? This report makes the case for grassroots engagement, participation, and governance over investments.

From FCDO/DIT and Palladium. Despite Black female entrepreneurs being one of the fastest growing entrepreneur groups in the US, they receive a disproportionately small amount of investment. In 2019, less than 9% of investment went to female founders, and less than 3% went to founders of color in the US. In the UK, only 0.5% of start-ups with Black founders received VC investment. Recent studies have shown the importance of diversity in building more equitable societies. Investment rates and current trends suggest Black Female Entrepreneurs’ (BFEs) fair access to investment resources requires attention. Despite Black female entrepreneurs being one of the fastest growing entrepreneur groups in the US, they receive a disproportionately small amount of investment. In 2019, less than 9% of investment went to female founders, and less than 3% went to founders of color in the US. In the UK, only 0.5% of start-ups with Black founders received VC investment.

Recent studies have shown the importance of diversity in building more equitable societies. Investment rates and current trends suggest Black Female Entrepreneurs’ (BFEs) fair access to investment resources requires attention.

The FCDO/DIT partnered with Palladium Impact Capital to conduct a market study examining the barriers to investment that BFEs experience in the UK and the US, and potential pathways to removing them.

From the Institutional Limited Partners Association (ILPA). The ILPA Diversity in Action initiative brings together limited partners and general partners who share a commitment to advancing diversity, equity and inclusion in the private equity industry. The goal of the initiative is to motivate market participants to engage in the journey towards becoming more diverse and inclusive and to build momentum around the adoption of specific actions that advance DEI over time.

GPs and LPs who join the Diversity in Action initiative commit to specific actions that advance diversity and inclusion, both within their organization and the industry more broadly. Diversity in Action signatories currently undertake four essential DEI actions and at least two additional actions (from an optional set of nine). The Diversity in Action framework includes a broad range of possible actions that span talent management, investment management and industry engagement.

From the Diverse Asset Managers Initiative (DAMI). This guide is designed for institutional investors (trustees and staff), primarily of public, corporate, faith, and labor union pension funds, as well as foundation and university endowments, who are interested in exploring the possibilities of investing institutional assets with diverse-owned asset management firms.

From Adam Smith International. Private sector development (PSD) practitioners are increasingly pursuing strategies aimed at increasing income and economically empowering poor women. For programmes to credibly prove that these strategies impact poor women – and to improve this impact through adaptive design and delivery – monitoring and results management (MRM) systems must be capable of understanding differentiated gendered impact. Where MRM systems are truly gender-responsive, they serve a function beyond accurate sex-disaggregated results reporting, and are crucial in influencing programme design, for example, the effective identification and profiling of female target beneficiaries during scoping for sector selection (who tend conventionally to be ‘missed’ or misunderstood, particularly within male-headed households).

Nonetheless, a number of measurement challenges remain. Most pressing among these, is the lack of clarity on who to count as a beneficiary when measuring changes to income. Crucially, the different ways in which this is approached tell very different stories as to the gendered impact of a PSD programme.

It’s an open secret: philanthropy today is top-heavy and insular. A glance at the world’s largest foundations and impact investment funds reveals that decision-makers tend to be disproportionately white, male, and from backgrounds of privilege. And decisions tend to be made in a closed, opaque way.

In Letting Go, Ben Wrobel and Meg Massey tell the story of the funders who have chosen to cede decision-making power to people with lived experience of the problem at hand. The stories range from a global foundation run by and for young feminist activists, to a neighborhood loan fund in Boston controlled by working-class residents of color.

As this book reveals, it’s not only possible to shift power in philanthropy and impact investing – it’s imperative in a world where inequality is reaching a breaking point.

From WOCAN. The W+ Standard, created by WOCAN, is the first women-specific standard that measures women’s empowerment in a transparent and quantifiable manner, gives a monetary value to results and creates a new channel to direct financial resources to women.

The W+ Standard measures six domains that are critical for women’s empowerment: Time savings, Income & Assets, Health, Leadership, Education & Knowledge and Food Security. These were determined together with rural women from Nepal and Kenya. Methods were developed to measure and quantify progress for each of these domains.

From Criterion Institute. The success of the field of gender lens investing is dependent on the elevation of translators and translation: individuals, organizations, and processes that facilitate understanding between gender and finance expertise. The accumulation of a wider variety of voices in decision-making is needed to improve both the financial returns and the gender and social impact of the program designs in the field.

From Green Climate Fund (GCF). This manual addresses GCF’s potential to mainstream gender into climate finance, building on its mandate to support a paradigm shift to low-emission and climate-resilient development. Developed with UN Women, this toolkit guides GCF partners on how to include women, girls, men, and boys from socially excluded and vulnerable communities in all aspects of climate finance.

This issue brief, part of a series published by ANDE in 2019, is designed to create a common knowledge base from which the Small and Growing Business (SGB) sector can work in the hopes of advancing towards selected development goals. This brief focuses on SDG 5.

From Oxfam GB. This paper shares Oxfam GB's experience of developing an approach to measuring women's empowerment over the course of five years, for use in its series of Effectiveness Reviews. Oxfam's aim is for this to be an easy and practical guide which shares experience and lessons learned in order to support other evaluators and practitioners who seek to pin down this 'hard-to-measure' concept. The hope is that the reader will make use of the measurement tools presented in this paper as guiding instruments that can be adapted to their needs.

From BNY Mellon. This report, a companion to the original Return on Equality publication, shines a spotlight on the opportunity to realise gains — in both gender equality and market returns — by increasing women’s financial inclusion around the world. Its aim is to inspire financial services providers to design and market products and services that fuel women’s full economic participation, and to encourage investors to steer their capital toward such companies.

From Acumen and ICRW. This framework and diverse set of case studies encourages entrepreneurs, impact investors and philanthropists to further examine specific ways in which they can integrate women into business model innovations and as key decision makers.

From UBS. This report offers actionable ways for private citizens to deploy their wealth and power towards improving gender equality.

By Jackie VanderBrug, Managing Director and Joseph Quinlan. Women today are an unparalleled force in the global economy as successful entrepreneurs, corporate executives and family breadwinners. Yet gender-based violence, the absence of women's legal rights and the persistent wage gap stubbornly remain. This paradox creates an unprecedented and underexplored opportunity for investors.

Gender Lens Investing, co-authored by Jackie VanderBrug, Managing Director and Joseph Quinlan, Managing Director and Chief Market Strategist, of U.S. Trust, Bank of America Private Wealth Management, is the first book of its kind to examine, in-depth the advantages of integrating gender into investment analysis.

From Veris Wealth Partners. Veris presents its fifth survey of GLI products that are both publicly available (stocks, bonds, and certificates of deposit), and explicitly support gender balance and equity.