Antony Bugg-Levine, Managing Director at Rockefeller Foundation, on Impact Investing, Metrics, & GIIN [VIDEO]

We had the pleasure to talk with Antony Bugg-Levine, Managing Director at Rockefeller Foundation, this past week at Africa Social Enterprise Forum in New York City. In this video interview, Antony shares insights on an initiative he manages at Rockefeller Foundation: “Harnessing the Power of Impact Investing”. Impact investing is an investment model that focuses on how for-profit investment can be harnessed to solve world problems. Watch this video to learn about impact investing, and hear what Antony also has to say about a new network that just launched at Clinton Global Initiative called Global Impact Investment Network, and GIIN’s efforts to measure social impact through Impact Reporting & Investment Standards.

Thank you Antony for sharing your valuable insights!

The Full Transcript:

Katrina: So here we are at the Africa Social Enterprise Forum in New York City. I’m with Antony of Rockefeller Foundation. Can you share with us, what is Rockefeller Foundation and why are you here at Africa Social Enterprise Forum?

Antony: Sure. The Rockefeller Foundation is one of the oldest private foundations in the U.S., we’ve been in existence for ninety six years. And we are an organization that focuses on supporting poor communities around the world to benefit more equitably from the forces of globalization. We operate in most countries and on many issues including health care, urbanization, and rural development.

Katrina: Fantastic. And what is your role at Rockefeller Foundation?

Antony: Sure, I run an initiative at Rockefeller Foundation called “Harnessing the Power of Impact Investing”. Impact investing is a new and potentially incredibly powerful force to help us address the problems that have previously been intractable. The basic premise of our initiative is an awareness that there is not enough philanthropic and government money in the world to solve the world’s problems. We have to figure out how for-profit investment can be harnessed to help address basic problems. Fortunately, we at Rockefeller have been working for the last few years with a growing group of global investors who are working together to see how they can use for-profit investment to solve basic social problems. They’re helping to provide education in slums. They’re supporting farmers with loans. They’re helping to build houses. And across the world there are incredibly exciting initiatives and there’s a new industry of impact investing.

Katrina: Fantastic, thank you.

And how did you become interested and involved in impact investing and Rockefeller Foundation?

Antony: I actually come from a career that’s included a stint at McKinsey, the management consulting firm, where I was working on business strategy for a range of corporations. And I also ran an NGO in Kenya called TechnoServe, which also takes a business-based approach to development. I came to Rockefeller two years ago, partly to pursue an interest I’ve had for quite a long time, trying to understand how we can get money in the hands of people who can use money to solve social problems.

Katrina:

Can you share, what is the role of social enterprise in development, and why not humanitarian aid?

Antony: Sure. Social enterprise and impact investing are very useful tools, in order to help mobilize the creativity and scalability of private enterprise to address social problems. To be very concrete, we are staring a new network, a new NGO called the Global Impact Investing Network, whose members are impact investors operating all around the world. And just to give you a few concrete examples of what they’re up to, and how this works: in the slums of Hyderbad in India, an impact investor is providing loans to private schools who charge as little as $4 per student per month. These school provide education as good as the public schools but do it in a way that is affordable.

What we see in the slums of Hydrabad now is someone who’s interested in providing education to poor people is not simply limited to providing charity. By providing loans to private schools that pay back the investor, they are able to solve that problem of education but are doing it in a way that is not just about government aid and charity. So around the world we’re seeing incredible innovation in how people are using for-profit investment to solve social problems. But importantly, we do not believe institutionally as The Rockefeller Foundation, and I certainly do not believe personally, that the market and for-profit investment can solve all problems. But at the same time we know that there is not enough money in the government and charity of aid to solve all the world’s problems. So if we want to create the world we want to see for ourselves and for our children, we have to figure out how we can get for-profit investors to work in complement to philanthropy and government to address the problems and scale.
Katrina:

When it comes to investing, metrics are very important, how do you measure social impact of these projects?

Antony: That’s a great question and something we’ve concerned ourselves with quite a bit. What we’ve been working on at The Rockefeller Foundation for the last two years, we’ve spoke with more than a thousand investors from around the world, and have asked them a very simple question and that is: “what will it take for you to solve more social problems, more efficiently, with for-profit investment?” One of the first things they tell us is “we have to have a credible and standard way for measuring the social impact of investments”. Once we have that, then we can unlock all of the capital that’s currently trapped in the private banks, in the investment banks. But without that kind of research and without those kinds of standards, we’re not going to be able to get bankers to put their money behind these kinds of social enterprises.

Katrina:

Where can everyone find out more about the Global Impact Investing Network and about Rockefeller Foundation?

Antony: Sure. The Global Impact Investing Network was formerly launched yesterday at the Clinton Global Initiative by President Clinton, Jamie Diamond, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase, the President of Rockefeller, and USAID, who are the major sponsors of the initiative at the beginning. You can find out more about them at GlobalImpactInvestingNetwork.org. You can find out more about Rockefeller at RockFound.org. And also, the work of building a credible standard of measuring the social impact of investments is a project of the Global Impact Investing Network and can be found on the web at IRIS-Standards.org.

Katrina: Excellent. Thank you so much, Antony.

Antony: Thank you.

Antony Bugg-Levine, Managing Director at Rockefeller Foundation

About: Rockefeller Foundation works to ensure that the opportunities unleashed by globalization are accessible to more people, more fully, in more places — and that poor and vulnerable people are equipped to seize them. Website: www.RockFound.org

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