From Women in VC. Any investment in women-led funds stands to have a significantly amplified impact on female founders downstream. It will shift what types of founders are getting funded, at scale, what products and services are brought to market, and who is being served by them. The potential returns are enormous. This report explores the nuances of female partners and women-led funds—the reality, the opportunities available, and the actions needed to move the conversation forward. The data points to an outsized opportunity to anchor and nurture this new wave of women-led funds, and emphasizes why the time to invest in their potential is right now.

From Value for Women (VFW). This report, written by VFW with support from the ANDE Catalyst Fund, summarizes the findings of a rapid scoping study that was conducted between October 2018 and February 2019 to capture the state-of-the-field in Latin America of impact investing with a gender lens. Through this report, VFW hopes to generate interest in the uptake of gender lens investing strategies and metrics across the impact investing ecosystem in Latin America, as well as highlight some of the work our peers in the impact investing sector are undertaking toward this end. The report culminates with recommendations that seek to provide guidance for Impact Investors and social entrepreneurship ecosystem actors on how they can begin applying a gender lens in their work.

From the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW). Shell Foundation and the UK Government commissioned the ICRW to conduct research on the key challenges women-led ventures face in setting up an energy business in India, and provide recommendations on how key actors in the ecosystem could attract and support women in the sector.

ICRW analysed 23 enterprise development programmes (EDPs) in India and identified four challenge areas:

Challenge 1: Women entrepreneurs are not participating in EDPs at equal rates as men. Challenge 2: Female entrepreneurs often do not have access to the same services and networks that male entrepreneurs do. In addition, services provided by EDPs are often not tailored to the needs of female entrepreneurs. Challenge 3: Investment gaps persist in women-led and co-led ventures. Challenge 4: Government of India (GOI) programmes have limited impact on female entrepreneurs, as deserving women-led ventures are not accessing or benefitting optimally from many GOI schemes.

The report presents solutions to these challenges in a series of tables and practical recommendations, addressed to three main categories of actors: EDPs, investors, and government partners. Each solution is categorised by time frame, potential impact, resource needs and gender focus.

We are a non-profit partnership promoting diversity in Venture Capital. Venture Capital is funding the future. The decisions made by VCs filter through to the whole community and we have a responsibility to ensure the right decisions are being made. We need the industry to be free from bias.

We have four key initiatives:

• We are building a diverse network of Venture Capital professionals.

• We are helping Venture Capital firms hire from diverse backgrounds.

• We are connecting the VC community to a broader network.

• The Data Project

By Jasmine Rashid. It’s time we demystify your money’s role in racial (in)justice. The US system of finance has long been a system of exploitation, and lack of access to capital continues to be the largest contributor of chronic racial inequality that reinforces the myth (and violent consequences) of white supremacy. Regardless of your personal relationship to finance, you’re already using money to support or undercut your values each day. Wealth holders and capital directors use the language of “liabilities” and “assets” to ensure that economics remains in the realm of limited accessibility. But here is some plain English for you: where you bank, how you spend, and what you invest in matters for Black lives.

From Value for Women. This How-To Guide makes an important contribution to our industry work by providing practical tools and resources for an investing community that urgently needs to address its diversity and inclusion deficits. Globally, awareness of gender lens investing continues to gain momentum, but we must convert this awareness to action and movement of capital, especially during this period of COVID-19 response and recovery. Thus, how fund managers invest is just as important as what they invest in. This perspective not only demands a technical approach (gender analysis, tools, and frameworks), but also broader organizational re-alignment (gender mainstreaming). This internal process is an essential part of creating external change and outcomes that advance gender equality.

From Wharton Social Impact Intiative and Catalyst at Large. A follow up to previous reports Project Sage (data through 2017) and Project Sage 2.0 (data through 2018), this latest report is a landscape analysis of structured private equity, venture capital, and private debt funds with a gender lens. Over 138 total funds and structured vehicles were included in this latest analysis, with data collected through December 2019.

By UNICEF, GenderSmart and Volta. The analysis presented in this report by UNICEF, GenderSmart and VOLTA lays out six core investment themes and examples of investable opportunities and calls on commercial organizations and investors, with an eye on social and economic impact, to adopt bold investment approaches across these themes. This includes patient investment capital through blended and other innovative financing structures as well as concrete due diligence and impact measurements.

Sasakawa Peace Foundation, Catalyst and Large and Sagana partner to map the landscape of gender lens investment vehicles in both public and private markets, across East and Southeast Asia.

From Preqin. Covering areas such as first-time fund performance and fundraising, and with examples of LPs that have had success investing in these new managers, LPs reading this report can expect a data-driven overview of first-time fund investing.

First-time funds have traditionally faced challenges securing capital commitments from LPs due to the nature of traditional closedend fund due diligence. Most investment professionals (or their external advisors) with responsibility to vet these private capital funds typically place significant emphasis on the GP’s track record, firm and investment history, and the duration of time for which the investment team has worked together. As closed-end funds are long-term and illiquid investments, many LPs do not feel comfortable committing significant capital to unproven managers, especially as many of these first-time funds focus on diverse and innovative, yet unproven, investment ideas.

Every top performing and “brand name” GP has had to raise a fund for the first time. Whether these first-time funds were teams spun off from a balance sheet at an investment bank or insurance company, or individuals leaving a more established GP to start their own firm, there have always been LPs providing capital commitments to back these investment ideas. Many of the LPs that have supported these first-time GPs’ initial investment strategies and talents have been rewarded with strong (and in some cases, exceptional) fund performance, increased portfolio diversification, experience with niche strategies and other factors beneficial to their overall investment program.

Criterion Institute, with the generous support of Dreilinden, has released “Investing with an LGBTQI Lens: Rethinking Gender Analysis Across Investing Fields,” a new guide on investing to further the rights and empowerment of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI) individuals.

We live in a moment where cultural norms, behaviors, and laws related LGBTQI individuals are changing significantly around the globe. On the one hand, there are expanded freedoms for our sexual orientations and gender identities. On the other, persecution and discrimination continue, and in some places are on the rise.

Our guide is an invitation to a range of individuals and institutions—including asset holders, asset managers, philanthropic funders, and gender lens investors—to think about how finance, as a system of power, can be engaged to address the marginalization and oppression of LGBTQI people. The guide also makes the case that incorporating an LGBTQI lens increases the ability of all investors to understand how LGBTQI considerations are material to investment decision making, helping them to uncover hidden opportunities and undervalued risks. Drawing on our 15 years of work building the field of gender lens investing, we describe the ideas, activities, people, and organizations who can participate in building a parallel investing field that achieves true equality for people of all sexual orientations, gender identities, and gender expressions.

From the Knight Foundation. This report captures insights from a new study about the state of diversity in the U.S. asset management industry. Professor Josh Lerner (Harvard Business School) and Bella Research Group led the research, building on a similar study published in May 2017. While numerous studies have documented the lack of diversity among asset managers and asset management firm employees, the current research contributes a new perspective by analyzing the diversity of ownership of asset management firms as well as any performance differences between diverse-owned and non-diverse owned asset mangers.

The goal of the initiative is to build a vibrant, coordinated effort to change the culture of the financial services industry as it relates to asset managers. Success will be achieved when there is common knowledge in the industry of the existence of numerous, high performing diverse-owned asset management firms and when they are valued and seamlessly considered by institutional investors. The measurement of success will be the increased use of diverse asset managers by institutional investors and the amount of assets under their management.

IEN and the HBCU Green Fund have joined forces to launch a new initiative aimed at improving endowment investment decision-making in higher education to better incorporate factors related to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).

The central driving force of this initiative is this Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Working Group comprised of senior leaders from higher education, the investment industry, foundations, and non-profit partners. The group seeks to leverage the wide networks and expertise of the members and enable cross-sectoral collaboration to ensure that this work is championed by a diverse range of decision-makers involved in the endowment investment process.

The Diversity Project is a cross-company initiative championing a more inclusive culture within the Savings and Investment profession.

We believe that we have an extraordinary opportunity to press the re-set button in our industry: to recruit, nurture and retain the first truly diverse generation of Savings and Investment professionals.

That generation will themselves perpetuate diversity in our industry; we are looking to break one cycle and create another. If we are successful, in the next four years:

1. Our businesses will better reflect both society at large, and the individuals who trust us with their money.

2. Our people will create better financial outcomes to benefit our diverse savers and investors.

3. We will attract more interest in the industry, with a pipeline of diverse talent.

Diversity is not only our social obligation, it’s a business imperative.

Transform Finance envisions a world where capital is aligned with social justice values and is accessible to activists and community leaders as a tool for transformative social change. We empower community leaders to shape how capital flows affect them – both in terms of holding capital accountable and having a say in its deployment – by demystifying finance and building capacity for community-centered initiatives. We support investors committed to deepening their impact investment practice to adopt transformative approaches and demonstrate the viability of the approach via education, concrete tools and strategies, and overall guidance. We foster a new discourse and collaboration between previously disconnected stakeholders – investors and social justice practitioners – by creating connections, breaking down barriers of knowledge and values, and facilitating dialogue.

The Midwest Investors Diversity Initiative is a coalition of institutional investors dedicated to increasing racial, ethnic, and gender diversity on corporate boards of companies headquartered in six Midwest states. With a combined $300 billion in assets in management, the coalition uses corporate engagements and shareholder rights to protect shareholder value and maximize returns. Members include the City of Chicago’s Treasurer’s Office, Illinois State Treasurer’s Office, Ohio Public Employees Retirement System, School Employees Retirement System of Ohio, SEIU Master Trust, Sundance Family Foundation, Segal Marco Advisors, Seventh Generation Interfaith, Trinity Health, UAW Retiree Medical Benefits Trust, and Wespath Benefits and Investments.

The VC Include platform was created in 2018 to accelerate investment into diverse emerging managers—women, Black, Latinx, Indigenous and LGBTQ—to drive economic growth and opportunity in the market. We’re thoughtful about integrating environmental, social, corporate governance (ESG) and sustainability into the funds we support.