Volume 75: A New Loan Fund — Five Year Impact Return to Create and Preserve Affordable Homes
Volume 75: A New Loan Fund — Five Year Impact Return to Create and Preserve Affordable Homes

Women’s Community Revitalization Project’s Loan Fund:  Harnessing new resources to create and preserve affordable homes in communities where housing costs are sky-rocketing. Rising housing costs coupled with stagnant household incomes are straining low-income families’ ability to stay in their homes. The Women’s Community Revitalization Project (WCRP) is a group working to address this issue in several Philadelphia neighborhoods by creating a Loan Fund to enable this effort to move forward.

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Dermot MurphyNora Lichtash, Women’s Community Revitalization Project (WCRP)
Volume 74: The First Mover Advantage — An Investment Approach for Maximizing Impact
Volume 74: The First Mover Advantage — An Investment Approach for Maximizing Impact

“Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.” This popular phrase often embodies the sentiment of diverse emerging impact fund managers who hear countless times, “We like your strategy and your team, but we don’t invest in first-time funds” or “Come back to us when you are on your fourth fund.” Amidst a vast sea of capital, these fund managers are often shut out of accessing the funds needed to achieve their impact goals. This is usually due to a lack of risk appetite for the perceived risk of investing with emerging managers.

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Dermot MurphyNoelle St.Clair Lentz, Allivate Impact Capital
Volume 73: Navigating Challenges in the Coffee Industry — Bridging Gaps Between Underserved Communities
Volume 73: Navigating Challenges in the Coffee Industry — Bridging Gaps Between Underserved Communities

The global coffee industry, often romanticized for its rich aroma and global connections, harbors deep-rooted challenges that disproportionately affect underserved communities in the African diaspora. This complex web of issues includes a stark lack of transparency, traceability, and equity, perpetuating cycles of poverty and dependence. Simultaneously, similar struggles unfold in the vibrant city of Philadelphia, where systemic inequalities create barriers for underserved communities. Amidst these challenges, efforts to bridge the gap between distant communities and Philadelphia are underway, focusing on resilience and empowerment.

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Dermot MurphyNikisha Bailey & Matt Nam, Win Win Coffee
Volume 72: Seeds of Change: Cultivating a Thriving Impact Investing Ecosystem in Philadelphia 
Volume 72: Seeds of Change: Cultivating a Thriving Impact Investing Ecosystem in Philadelphia 

The devastating consequences of divestment, like deteriorating infrastructure, vacant lots, and vast expanses of food and green space deserts, are glaringly obvious in low-income areas of Philadelphia. These inequalities in resources and opportunities have created a vicious cycle of poverty and made upward mobility very difficult. For the Philadelphia region, relying solely on traditional philanthropic models is insufficient to address these entrenched disparities and complex challenges. Poverty, inequality, and environmental degradation cannot be solved by simply chasing profit margins and depending on philanthropy.

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Dermot MurphyDermot Murphy, ImpactPHL, OptImpact
Volume 71: A City of Neighborhoods and the Challenge of Affordable Housing
Volume 71: A City of Neighborhoods and the Challenge of Affordable Housing

The devastating consequences of divestment, like deteriorating infrastructure, vacant lots, and vast expanses of food and green space deserts, are glaringly obvious in low-income areas of Philadelphia. These inequalities in resources and opportunities have created a vicious cycle of poverty and made upward mobility very difficult. For the Philadelphia region, relying solely on traditional philanthropic models is insufficient to address these entrenched disparities and complex challenges. Poverty, inequality, and environmental degradation cannot be solved by simply chasing profit margins and depending on philanthropy.

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Dermot MurphyDavid Langlieb, The Philadelphia Accelerator Fund
Volume 69: Investments in Publicly Traded CDFI Banks Catalyzed by ECIP
Volume 69: Investments in Publicly Traded CDFI Banks Catalyzed by ECIP

In September of 2022, the Department of Treasury provided $8.3 billion of Covid relief to CDFI and MDI banks through a program called Emergency Capital Investment Program (“ECIP”). This program provided substantial equity-like awards ranging from $60-500 million to encourage these organizations to increase their financial services to low- and moderate-income, urban, rural, and minority communities. Some recipients are publicly traded, and these large cash infusions attracted the attention of some deep value-seeking investors. In this article, I will explain why this program presents a rare potential opportunity to earn high financial returns while investing in entities that are making a significant impact in their communities. 

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Dermot MurphyAndrew Porter, Stepping Stone Partners
Volume 68: CDFIs Create Vibrant Communities Where Individuals Prosper
Volume 68: CDFIs Create Vibrant Communities Where Individuals Prosper

Imagine an inclusive, equitable, and vibrant community where individuals prosper, triumph over poverty, and live free from discrimination. Community First Fund, a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), works toward making that vision a reality by breaking down barriers to wealth-building opportunities for individuals, families, and business owners, especially Persons of Color, women, and immigrants.

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Dermot MurphyDan Betancourt, Community First Fund
Volume 67: Innovation, Policy, and Nonprofits Creating Impact for Returning Citizens
Volume 67: Innovation, Policy, and Nonprofits Creating Impact for Returning Citizens

The US Criminal Justice System directly impacts 6.6 million people costing more than $80 billion annually.  Racial disparities, extractive business practices, and misaligned incentives mar this profoundly broken system.  More than 4,000 corporations profit from mass incarceration through predatory pricing, prison labor, and the private prison industry, according to research conducted by the Prison Policy Initiative. But the opportunity exists to find highly innovative private sector business models that address the injustices of mass incarceration, poised for the ethical disruption of the Criminal Justice System.

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Dermot MurphyChris Bentley, The De-Carceration Fund
Volume 63: Reset the Orientation of Impact Measurement
Volume 63: Reset the Orientation of Impact Measurement

For impact measurement to serve its highest purpose, the starting intention should be gathering data that serves to improve impact rather than to prove impact. In the end, the right metrics can do both, but the problem with orienting towards impact metrics that look good on a website, impact report, or update to funders is that it puts the emphasis on proving or supporting the impact thesis. The confirmation bias in that approach limits the ability to learn and improve as it causes triangulation that actually obscures clear impact of outputs to outcomes. The insight that is produced in listening helps develop learned methods instead of data on strengthening varying approaches for impact.

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Dermot MurphyLindsay Smalling, 60 Decibels
Volume 62: ESG and Impact - Why We Need Both for Meaningful Change
Volume 62: ESG and Impact - Why We Need Both for Meaningful Change

At Proof of Impact, we’ve worked with both investors and companies that have a wide range of motivations. In this work, we’ve noticed a growing trend: the widespread use of either “ESG” or “impact” to describe data-driven measurement and operational improvement efforts. However, rarely have organizations used ESG and impact together. This is largely because ESG and impact seem to be two different worlds that exist side by side, with different cultures, languages, and approaches to using data to drive positive change. Only recently have the two worlds met – or rather collided.

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Dermot MurphyEvan Vahouny, Proof of Impact
Volume 60: For Us, By Us: Democratizing Investment and Building Community Power in Boston
Volume 60: For Us, By Us: Democratizing Investment and Building Community Power in Boston

In response to Boston’s notorious racial health and wealth divide, the Boston Ujima Project (“Ujima”) was founded in 2017 as a community-led business and finance ecosystem. We sought to underwrite our people’s strength by directly resourcing what we call our economy builders: our small businesses, artists, and grassroots organizations. People often ask why we chose an ecosystem model, and we always say: a systemic problem requires a systemic solution.

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Dermot MurphyPaige Curtis, Boston Ujima Project
Volume 59: Impact is the Metric

Profitability metrics are simple in financial terms, often measured by the rate of return, cash flow, or risk-adjusted return. On the other hand, solving problems is more difficult to define metrics and measures for. This creates a headwind for the impact investment industry as participants cannot establish consensus for the wide array of definitions for impact investment success.

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Dermot MurphyJason Ray, Zenith Wealth Partners
Volume 57: Investing in People, Then in Places
Volume 57: Investing in People, Then in Places

The Kensington Corridor Trust fosters the equitable economic revitalization of a commercial corridor and its surrounding neighborhood through local partnerships, strategic programming, and an innovative approach to moving real estate assets out of the speculative private market. This pioneering model of neighborhood ownership, governance, and local economic development has the potential to keep control within the neighborhood and ensure long-term affordability.

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Dermot MurphyAdriana Abizadeh, Kensington Corridor Trust
Volume 56: Cultivating the Next Generation of Tech Leaders is a Long Game
Volume 56: Cultivating the Next Generation of Tech Leaders is a Long Game

To combat decades of disinvestment, we must refocus on a long-term systemic approach to increase equity in tech and venture capital. Often, people will quickly default to a pipeline problem, lack of social capital, or insufficient funding as sources of inequity in tech. In order to affect lasting change, we must address each of these issues simultaneously.

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Dermot MurphySylvester Mobley, Plain Sight Capital, Coded by Kids