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"It's leading to cynicism," says Terrence Keeley. That's the gist of his new book, Sustainable: Moving Beyond ESG to Impact Investing, in which the former BlackRock executive calls for institutional investors, including pension funds, endowments, and foundations, to move away from what he calls the "ESG industrial complex" and toward direct impact investing.
Instead, Keeley says, investors should focus on waste reduction, affordable housing, health care, renewable energy, and education, the Wall Street Journal reports.
"The understanding people have when they buy an ESG product is that it will perform at or in excess of the market, while simultaneously doing some kind of good," Keeeley says.
"And to the extent you want to have a positive impact on the environment, that means investing, not divesting."
ESG, he says, is "not living up to its promise."
For example, MSCI's ESG indexes have underperformed the broader indexes over the past five years, he says, and those funds invest only in companies in accordance with the Paris 2050 objective, like Amazon or Google.
"These are all genuine concerns," Keeeley says, "but the way we're going about it, combining those and building alpha-based products is senseless."
Selected Grant News Headlines
A customized collection of grant news from foundations and the federal government from around the Web.
"We are so used to being almost permanently online that we don't really appreciate what we have and do not really know what to do when we're not," Joni Mitchell wrote in her 1970s song "Big Yellow...more
The concept of "impact investing" has taken off in recent years, with more than $1 trillion in assets under management. But a new study out of Harvard Business School suggests that while impact...more
"All investments are impact investments," says Adam Spence, CEO of SVX, a non-profit financial services firm that has just launched Canada's first index designed to measure the impact of investments...more
Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing has gained popularity in recent years as clients seek to align their investments with their values and promote positive change in the...more
Foundation: Silicon Valley Community Foundation, California Endowment
In 2024, Los Angeles will host the Mission Investors Exchange 2024 National Conference, an annual conference that brings together more than 750 philanthropy and impact investing leaders from across...more
Foundation: California Community Foundation, California Endowment
Ava DuVernay financed her latest film with money from the Giving Pledgean initiative of the California Endowment, the largest US foundation to commit its entire $4 billion portfolio to social and...more
In what may be a first for a major US city, Los Angeles has been chosen as the site of the 2024 Mission Investors Exchange National Conference, a conference that will focus on "investing in social...more
Foundation: Marguerite Casey Foundation, Marguerite Casey Foundation, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, Skoll Foundation, Target Foundation, Ford Foundation, Philadelphia Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation
"The US creative economy was most recently valued at over $1 trillion by the National Endowment for the Arts," per a press release, "even before considering film, fashion, video games, beauty, food,...more
"Having a purposeful job actually does transform someone's life," says Edwin Walsh, who runs a social enterprise in Australia called Assembled Threads. "You actually are moving someone from...more
A new scholarship fund in Canada will help high school students who want to further their education, the CBC reports. The Westlock Community Foundation in Alberta received a $26,800 donation from...more
Social Entrepreneurship
Spotlight
Building a Million Dollar Company Where Everyone Counts
Ganesh Natarajan is the Founder and Chairman of 5FWorld, a new platform for funding and developing start-ups, social enterprises and the skills eco-system in India. In the past two decades, he has built two of India’s high-growth software services companies – Aptech and Zensar – almost from scratch to global success.
