From Convergence. Blended finance is the use of catalytic capital from public or philanthropic sources to increase private sector investment in sustainable development. This blended finance primer leverages Convergence's database of historical blended finance transactions to generate unique insights about the blended finance market to date.

From Criterion Institute. Process metrics are indicators that allow an examination of progress on gender or social equity overall. They allow thinking beyond “counting” that moves toward valuing. For example, process metrics could allow us to move beyond counting the number of marginalized people in leadership at an investment firm and instead ask about the firm’s gender practices throughout the investment process. Process metrics are particularly important in designing a transformative investment model that seeks to promote equity, as social equity stems not only from improved access to resources and decision making but control over these aspects.

These process metrics, developed in collaboration with key branches of the Australian and Canadian governments, are designed to analyze power structures across a variety of investment processes and can be leveraged to varying degrees in assessing the power dynamics of capital flow across asset classes and the expected return spectrum.

From CDP. Part of the CDP Toolkit on Funding and Financing Climate Action, including Relevant Projects and Initiatives, Capital Type, Top Funding and Finance Pathways, Resources or Partners, and Case Examples.

From CDP. This toolkit originates from a yearlong initiative of CDP through its Matchmaker Program. Matchmaker aims to bridge the divides among infrastructure ideas, interdepartmental communication and funding. By working directly with cities, CDP highlights sustainable urban infrastructure projects to the investment community.

The intention of this document is not to serve as a template, but to ignite ideas on how to ideate, pilot, implement, and facilitate projects that equitably benefit people and respond responsibly to the causes and impacts of anthropogenic climate change. This toolkit is developed, written, and designed within a North American context, using a lexicon and concepts most familiar in the North American region. Moreover, the target audience for this toolkit is individuals working with a government (whether city, municipal, or state), regional consortia, academic institutions, or other organizations to develop climate interventions in their communities. The concepts, however, just as easily apply to organizers, community leaders, or other individuals with an interest in developing community-centered solutions to mitigate or adapt to the impacts of climate change.

Cooperation Canada recognizes the importance of strategic collaboration in efforts to dismantle systemic racism in Canada and abroad. The organization is undergoing its own internal process of anti-racist institutional change and collaborating with the rest of the sector to ensure collective and inclusive approaches.

Cooperation Canada has convened an advisory group to articulate avenues of collective action towards a more anti-racist sector. Systemic racism exists everywhere, including in the international cooperation sector, which aims to contribute to building a better and fairer world. To do that, our organizations must address the sector’s legacy of racial bias (particularly anti-Black and anti-Indigenous bias). We must also work to redress global interventions that have denied peoples and institutions from historically disadvantaged countries their agency and right to self-determination in the name of economic and social progress. As a signatory to human rights treaties (including those addressing reconciliation with Indigenous peoples and protecting all persons from bias based on race, ethnicity, or other identity factors), we are committed to upholding values of equality, dignity and inclusion and advocating for their application across all areas of Canada’s global engagement.

To support a collective sector approach, Cooperation Canada has convened a diverse advisory group that developed a comprehensive framework for anti-racist efforts. The Framework outlines key commitments ranging from efforts to shift institutional structures and processes, to addressing racial bias in the work of sector organizations, particularly relating to partnerships, program design and implementation, advocacy, storytelling, and communications more broadly. After an inclusive consultation process, the Framework was launched on 20 January for organizational sign on.

To ensure accountability and a forward-looking approach, the Framework will be facilitated by a Hub, consisting of a Task Force for Accountability and a Working Group for strengthening sector capacity. The Task Force will produce annual reports and inform the priorities of the Working Group, whose activities will aim at strengthening the institutional and collective capacity of signatory organizations to make progress against the commitments outlined in the Framework.

This Framework is not perfect or final, nor is it our destination. This Framework, however, will provide a common ground, guiding instruments, and a momentum for a more anti-racist international cooperation sector. We invite you to sign on to the Framework (available below in English and French), reach out to others to do the same, and engage with us moving forward. This is just the beginning, and we can’t wait to begin this work with you.

From the World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA). This report presents the methodology of the Gender Benchmark, an in-depth evaluation of companies on gender equality and women’s empowerment. The first public ranking of companies, as well as the results from the first application of this methodology, will be published in September 2020 and will present how the apparel industry’s most influential companies address gender equality and women’s empowerment. Ultimately, the Gender Benchmark will enable all stakeholders, from consumers and investors to employees and business leaders beyond the apparel sector, to make informed decisions and encourage stronger corporate impact on gender equality and women’s empowerment.

From Equality Check. Equality Check is a platform where employees can leave anonymous reviews about equal opportunity, workplace culture, work/life balance, the management's commitment to diversity and more. Equality Check’s goal is to create a better workplace for everyone through transparency and accountability. The platform is always anonymous.

Employers benefit from becoming aware of how their employees feel about their culture, and those who score well will be rewarded by having a platform to attract the best talent from a diverse candidate pool. For employers who want to improve, we have developed tools to support them. Our unique approach combines qualitative and quantitative data for workplaces to go from insight to action.

From University of Toronto. This Coursera couse is aimed at helping the student become an Expert in Gender Analytics. Apply inclusive analytic techniques and human-centred design to generate innovative products, services, processes and policies using intersectional gender-based insights. Students will examine how policies, products, services & processes have gendered outcomes that miss out on opportunities or create needless risks; get comfortable with concepts such as sex, gender, gender identity & intersectionality, and how seeing through these lenses can lead to innovation; learn qualitative & quantitative analytical techniques to uncover intersectional gender-based insights, paying special attention to unheard voices; and use human-centred design to create innovative solutions that will help the student become a transformational leader.

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 Gender and the Economy. This Self-Assessment Survey guides you through the process of understanding your own competency levels for Gender Analytics, and identifies your strengths as well as areas to improve. These competencies are outlined in the Gender Analysis Competency Framework document.

This Self-Assessment is designed for your own learning purposes. The results will help you set learning goals during the program and may be used as reference when working on your Personal Development Plan. Results will not be shared with other learners.

From Gender and the Economy. The Gender Analysis Competency Framework is a description of the knowledge, skills and behaviours required to conduct gender analysis. The framework outlines the core competencies for varying levels of experience.

The Framework is broken into three sections:

1. The 5 W’s (What, Why, Where, When and Who of Gender Analysis)

2. How: Applying Gender Analysis

3. Organizational and Cultural Support

While the competencies are separated out into individual categories, they are clearly interrelated.

From Provenance. Every day, we buy products that impact our planet. Opaque supply chains are devastating environments and compromising the wellbeing of people, animals and communities. Each product and business is different, but rarely do we have the information we need to make positive choices about what to buy.

Provenance empowers brands to make the sourcing and impact behind their products transparent. We exist to enable citizens to access and trust in business sustainability efforts beyond today’s marketing hype. With our software, businesses can easily gather and present information and stories about products and their supply chains, including verified data to support them. By connecting this information to things - in store, on pack and online, we can all discover the origin, journey and impact of our products.

From MIT D-Lab and SEED. How do we co-design partnership models where all partners — despite their differences — have a shared understanding and buy-in for the value created and captured within the partnership? The Partnership Co-design Toolkit (P.ACT) seeks to tackle this challenge and offers a disciplined, inclusive, and practical approach to co-creating better value chain partnerships.

Collaboration between impact entrepreneurs and large corporate, government, or development actors holds the promise of scaling key innovations, yet these hybrid partnerships are difficult to forge, and many often fail due to uneven foundations. This toolkit is targeted towards impact entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, partnership brokers and facilitators, and accelerators supporting impact entrepreneurs who are initiating value chain partnerships, partnerships where organizations seek to integrate existing or create new value chains to bring these innovations to market.

Designed to maximize partnership success, P.ACT offers four unique features:

• Co-design process: A four stage co-design framework to ensure inclusive participation and continuous engagement of all partners.

• Value focus: Emphasis on defining both the value created and the value captured through the partnership. It focuses the partners' attention on generating value for their customers and beneficiaries as well as for their organizations.

• Collaborative approach: Individual self-assessment and reflection alongside collective problem solving, constructive dialogue, decision making, and action planning.

• Modular use: Enabling users to diagnose their partnership needs and helps them identify the right tools to move their partnership forward.

According to asset managers and industry associations with which GAO spoke, minority- and women-owned (MWO) asset managers face challenges when competing for investment management opportunities with institutional investors, such as retirement plans and foundations. For example, institutional investors and their consultants often prefer to contract with large asset managers with brand recognition and with whom they are familiar. Also, small firms, including MWO firms, are often unable to meet minimum requirements set by institutional investors, such as size (assets under management) and past experience (length of track record). State, local, and private retirement plans and foundations GAO interviewed addressed these challenges in a variety of ways, such as asking their consultants to include MWO firms in their searches. Many plans also lowered their minimum threshold requirements so that the requirements were proportional to the size of the firms while maintaining the same performance requirements for all asset managers in their selection processes.

Federal retirement plans, the endowment, and the insurance program GAO reviewed invest in asset classes in which MWO asset managers have a market presence, but overall use of MWO firms varied. For example, some retirement plans either did not use any MWO firms or did not track this information. The endowment and insurance program reported using some MWO asset managers.

GAO identified four key practices institutional investors can use to increase opportunities for MWO asset managers. These practices are consistent with federal interests in increasing opportunities for MWO businesses.

• Top leadership commitment . Demonstrate commitment to increasing opportunities for MWO asset managers.

• Remove potential barriers. Review investment policies and practices to remove barriers that limit the participation of smaller, newer firms.

• Outreach. Conduct outreach to inform MWO asset managers about investment opportunities and selection processes.

• Communicate priorities and expectations. Explicitly communicate priorities and expectations about inclusive practices to investment staff and consultants and ensure those expectations are met.

Some federal entities we reviewed, such as the Federal Reserve System, have used all the practices, but others made partial, limited, or no use of the practices.

• The Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board does not intend to use the practices in its planned mutual fund window platform.

• The Navy Exchange Service Command and Tennessee Valley Authority Retirement System used one practice, but have not used the others.

• The Army and Air Force Exchange Service has used two practices, and partially used two practices.

By using the key practices, the entities GAO reviewed could widen the pool of candidates in their asset manager searches and help ensure that they find the most qualified firms. In keeping with federal interests, the practices could also help address barriers MWO firms face and increase opportunities for them.

From SASB. The purpose of this project is to assess the scope and prevalence of various human capital management themes across SASB’s sectors and within its 77 industries to develop a solid evidenced-based view on this cross-cutting theme. A major component of this project’s objective is to design and implement a systematic analysis by the means of a human capital framework to assess the materiality of these various issues; determine which issues are cross-cutting and which are industry-specific; identifying key general issue categories; and forming recommendations related to advancing this project from the research phase to a standard-setting phase.

The Gender-Smart Enterprise Assistance Research Coalition (G-SEARCh) comprises a group of six like-minded impact investors: AlphaMundi Foundation, Acumen, SEAF, Root Capital, AHL Venture Partners and Shell Foundation, working to help scale purpose driven businesses and gender lens impact investing for more sustainable and inclusive economies through actionable evidence, fostering dialogue and collaboration across sectors. G-SEARCh believes that gender diverse teams lead to better financial and social outcomes and strives to build the evidence and a strong business case for investing with a gender lens that will be shared with the broader sector.

As part of this effort, the William Davidson Institute’s (WDI) Performance Measurement and Improvement team will develop and execute a robust research plan to generate evidence on improvements in financial and social performance of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that receive gender-lens investments and incorporate gender-smart activities across their business processes. For this research, WDI will investigate the outcomes of gender-smart technical assistance (TA) provided to SMEs, using interviews and surveys to gather data with the additional goal to strengthen these interventions to generate further impact. WDI will also investigate the effectiveness of different approaches and tools that the G-SEARCh consortium’s members use to incorporate gender-smart practices across 28-30 SMEs in different regions. The research will leverage existing data gathered by investors, SMEs and implementing partners and will use participatory research approaches. Deep dives on a select group of SMEs will also collect data on a key target audience to assess the potential outcomes of gender lens investment and TA. WDI will work closely with G-SEARCh and other stakeholders in the sector to develop a gender lens investment toolkit and case studies to illustrate various interventions and analysis, and will produce a report summarizing key findings.

The goal of this research is to provide knowledge and lessons to SMEs as they seek to become more inclusive and gender-equitable, and to impact investors, as they allocate resources to gender-smart interventions and approaches so that impact investing becomes a tool for gender transformation.

From the European Commission. The EU taxonomy is a classification system, establishing a list of environmentally sustainable economic activities. The EU taxonomy is an important enabler to scale up sustainable investment and to implement the European Green Deal. Notably, by providing appropriate definitions to companies, investors and policymakers on which economic activities can be considered environmentally sustainable, it is expected to create security for investors, protect private investors from greenwashing, help companies to plan the transition, mitigate market fragmentation and eventually help shift investments where they are most needed.

The Commission is currently preparing an IT tool that will facilitate the use of the taxonomy by allowing users to navigate easily through the taxonomy. The tool will be available from the beginning of 2021.

From Parallelle Finance. This table lists the primary publicly-traded gender lens equity funds available to individual investors, including mutual fund, ETF, ETN, SICAV, sub-SICAV, trust and unit trust structures. Some provide several share classes and multiple exchange listings. The funds are divided into global and regional equity, then ranked by AUM, which totals $2.7 billion.

From Morningstar. As goal #5 of The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals states, “Gender equality is not only a fundamental human right, but a necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world.“ In the corporate sphere, the same principles hold. Research has shown that companies committed to robust gender diversity policy and practice achieve superior financial results. The Morningstar® Developed Markets Ex-Japan Gender Diversity IndexSM offers exposure to companies exhibiting strong gender diversity policy and practice, leveraging The Equileap Gender Equality Scorecard™.

From CDC. Guidance on gender-smart investing and gender-smart approaches to build value for businesses, including an overview of gender-smart investing; guidance and tools on integrating gender in the investment process; steps, tools and templates to assess, implement and measure gender value creation opportunities; approaches to increasing gender diversity in the workplace; guidance on applying a gender lens to the evaluation of investments across global sectors; and case studies.