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.