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Philanthropy

Visionaries in Action-Sir Ronald Cohen's guide to investments that matter

Sir Ronald Cohen is a trailblazer of impact investing. For nearly two decades, his pioneering initiatives have catalyzed global efforts to drive private capital to serve social and environmental good.

Today, he is the President of the Global Steering Group for Impact Investment (GSG), The Portland Trust, and the recently created International Foundation for Valuing Impacts (IFVI). He chaired the Social Impact Investment Taskforce established under the United Kingdom’s presidency of the G8 (2013–2015), the Social Investment Task Force (2000–2010) and the Commission on Unclaimed Assets (2005–2007). In 2012, he received the Rockefeller Foundation’s Innovation Award for innovation in social finance.

Sir Ronald delivered a keynote address at the 2023 Asia Philanthropy Forum, live from Tel Aviv. Here, we present highlights and the key themes he explored.

Impact investment trumps charity

“Those of us who have foundations that have endowments are beginning to realize that it doesn’t make sense for us to be using our grants to curb environmental pollution while investing in companies that contribute to polluting the world,” said Sir Ronald.

“We’re using roughly 95% of our capital through investment, and we’re giving away roughly 5% of it a year. So it doesn’t make sense to be creating harm with 95% and trying to relieve it with five, right?”

Environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing is thought to amount to more than US$40 trillion globally, which is around half of all assets in the hands of professional asset managers. But Sir Ronald is keen to see this proportion get significantly higher in the coming years—and not just because of the various community benefits that result.

“The significance of risk-return impact optimization is that you can actually deliver better growth and better profitability than if you ignore environmental impact,” he explained. 

“We’re beginning to see charitable foundations define strategies that achieve the goals of the foundation through their investment portfolio without sacrificing financial return.”

What is changing?

Impact investment is getting far more sophisticated at assessing businesses. Sir Ronald explained that the impacts of a company are created in four principal ways: the environmental impact from its operations; the employment impact on its people; the product impact; and the supply chain impact on people and the planet.

In recent times, we have started to see mechanisms being implemented within markets that reward a positive impact. “We’ve seen capital markets adopt the thinking of impact investment and grow a sustainability-linked bond and loan market where the rate of interest of a borrowing company falls if it achieves a social or environmental target,” Sir Ronald said.

Another critical development that Sir Ronald is seeing within impact investment is the application of artificial intelligence (AI). “Machine learning and augmented reality are coming together with impact thinking to disrupt business models that pollute,” he said.

The coming revolution of accountability

But of all the changes Sir Ronald is currently seeing within impact investing and philanthropy, he is most energized by the growing ability to measure and ensure accountability.

“With impact measurement coming into business and finance, we’re beginning to see philanthropy measure its own outcomes,” he said. “We’re beginning to see philanthropists directing their grant capital to the organizations that deliver a better social, environmental and economic return. And we begin, therefore, to be able to support nonprofits that are delivering good impact performance over much longer periods of time.”

Sir Ronald believes we’re now going to see philanthropy become more effective and more scalable than it has been previously.

“Up until now, our model has been that we give you money for two or three years, and then we have to help somebody else. My hope is that we can begin to fund philanthropic service providers in the way that we fund businesses. The better the impact performance, the more money we give them over a longer period of time.”

We can help

If you would like to learn more about impact investing, or a philanthropic initiative, we encourage you to reach out to your J.P. Morgan team.

Here we present some highlights and key themes of impact investing explored by Sir Ronald Cohen.

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