Context 

Impact Investing has grown rapidly in the nearly 15 years since the term was coined, as awareness and commitment to investing for both financial and impact returns has grown among investors. Yet impact investing still represents less than 1% of all assets under management in the United States, with growth impeded by the relative immaturity of its enabling environment, or the field building “public goods” – such as industry networks, financial and impact data, and policy advocacy and incentives– which enable capital to flow efficiently in any market.  

Scope 

Camber was engaged by the U.S. Impact Investing Alliance (USIIA), hosted by the Ford Foundation, and the Omidyar Network, to develop the strategy and operating model for the Tipping Point Fund (TPF), a pooled grant vehicle to fund these core field building activities and spur the growth of the impact investing field. This work was done on behalf of, and in consultation with, the USIIA’s Presidents’ Council on Impact Investing, comprising 19 private foundation Presidents and representing over $80B in assets. 

Camber facilitated a collaborative co-design process for the TPF, engaging over 30 impact investing subject matter experts, and a consultative group of prospective member foundation leadership to design the fund. Camber’s work to co-design the TPF included (1) a current state landscape of the impact investing market (Exhibit 1) and the challenges impeding its growth; (2) evaluation and prioritization of pooled investment priorities of the fund, prioritizing public goods unlikely to emerge spontaneously through market activity, yet critical to the continued growth of the impact investing (Exhibit 2); (3) design of its operating model and governance structure; and (4) developing the fundraising strategy and collateral pitch materials (prospectus, pitch deck, talking points, etc.).  

Outcomes 

The Tipping Point Fund launched in December 2019 with $12.5M in pooled grant funding from 9 member foundations. The Fund made its initial public policy-focused grants in July 2020. This first-of-its-kind pooled funding collaborative in the field of impact investing is demonstrating the potential to align funders’ financial and advocacy resources around a common theory of market development to accelerate progress.  

The greater Seattle region has experienced unprecedented growth in recent years, coupled with widening disparities. The pace of economic growth in our region is extraordinarily high, yet this growth has not been reinvested such that individuals, households, and communities truly thrive. Camber partnered with Civic Commons (a Seattle Foundation initiative) to develop a tool to measure shared prosperity, with the intent of informing decision making and collaboration among the social, private, and public sectors. While the traditional definition of prosperity focuses on measures such as GDP, shared prosperity emphasizes the overall well-being of everybody in our region, holding firm the idea that we do better when we all do better. 

Camber was tasked with determining the structure and appropriate indicators for the scorecard, as well as supporting a consortium of public, private, and social sector stakeholders to ensure the tool would be utilized across sectors. Camber worked with an advisory board to craft and align on a theory of change and define an initial set of bounds and requirements for the indicators. Based on the notion of shared prosperity, Camber identified meaningful categories (individuals, households, communities, economy, and democracy) and facilitated discussion to ensure that potential indicators enabled progress tracking, as well as shared interpretation of greater regional well-being. With deep literature and database research, consultation with subject matter experts, and advisory board engagement, Camber identified specific metrics for inclusion on the scorecard. Camber worked closely with the client to test the scorecard through a roadshow with additional SMEs and actors in the field to evaluate the actionability of the tool. Finally, Camber incorporated roadshow feedback and partnered with a designer to develop the final scorecard. 

The result of this collaboration was the Scorecard for Shared Prosperity, a regional asset launched in Fall of 2019. The Scorecard for Shared Prosperity prioritizes how individuals, households, and communities in our region are thriving, supported by a growing economy and a vibrant democracy.  All five dimensions of this framework are required to work in sync to truly achieve shared prosperity for our region. This scorecard is updated regularly and is meant to motivate new ways of thinking about prosperity, promote celebration of our collective successes, and galvanize action toward tackling our region’s most pressing issues. 

Since its founding in 1941, Freedom House has been a leader in championing democracy abroad, through research (including the flagship annual Freedom in the World report), advocacy, and extensive on-the-ground programs.

Faced with growing isolationism at home and the erosion of America’s own democratic standards, Freedom House engaged Camber Collective to guide the organization through a strategic revisioning process. Freedom House sought to pivot from an organization focused primarily on international programming, and heavily reliant on U.S. government funding, to an organization working on U.S. and global democracy, with a strong, diversified funding base.  

Camber worked hand-in-hand with the organization’s Executive Leadership Team to co-design the new organization by: (1) developing a unifying vision and Theory of Change for the new organization; (2) defining and prioritizing among potential future state activities; (3) conducting a gaps analysis and fundraising feasibility assessment to understand the changes requires between the current and future state; and (4) developing a tactical programmatic and operational roadmap and supporting financial model to guide the transition and set it up for success. 

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is a world leading international security and foreign policy think tank.  Since its founding 1962, CSIS has built a strong brand in the policy ecosystem, known for the development of pragmatic, bi-partisan solutions to policy challenges.  In November 2018, CSIS launched a strategic planning effort, guided by the Strategic Task Force (STF) of the Board of Trustees, to critically assess the organization’s positioning in a shifting policy ecosystem; articulate the organization’s mission, vision, and values; develop a process to set institutional priorities; and define the strategy for CSIS’s next decade to enable the organization to effectively drive impact in this shifting global context.

CSIS engaged Camber in two phases of work spanning 10 months. In the first phase Camber supported the strategic planning effort by developing a fact base and landscape assessment to identify the organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, as well as the dynamics of the changing policy environment in which CSIS operates. This landscape assessment included extensive internal engagement through interviews and workshops with scholars and administrative leadership across CSIS; more than 25 interviews with stakeholders across the sectors in which CSIS works – including current and former government officials, corporate leaders, funders, other think tanks and the media; and quantitative analysis of CSIS financials, audience engagement, and cross-program collaborative efforts.

Phase two of the engagement focused on refining and building out– including execution details and anticipated costs – the core elements of the strategic plan. Working hand-in-hand with the STF and the executive leadership team, Camber articulated three pillars of the strategy:  

• Develop multidisciplinary projects: CSIS will leverage its multidisciplinary capability to focus on collaborative, high-impact projects that will help define the future of national security.  

• Strengthen the revenue raising model: CSIS will invest in its development team to grow the proportion of funding that is raised centrally, and focus on increasing the revenue it is able to raise from foundations and individuals.  

• Engage new audiences and build the CSIS brand: CSIS will be more intentional and strategic about audience engagement at all levels. Doing so will include making investments in a brand-enhancing signature event and a signature product, as well as efforts to more effectively connect with influencers outside Washington.  

CSIS’s strategic plan was formally adopted by the Board of Trustee in November 2019, with additional financial commitments secured to enable its successful implementation in 2020 and beyond.