The Impact Investor Project was established in 2012 as a two-year research partnership between InSight at Pacific Community Ventures, CASE at Duke University, and ImpactAssets. The goal was simple: supplant the guesswork and conjecture in impact investing with solid evidence of high performance and, in the process, expose the concrete practices of outstanding funds for use as the foundation for a more sophisticated and successful market. The objective was to try to understand, in each case, what factors led to a fund’s success. A sample of the questions we asked include: What were the fund’s origins? Who were its early champions? etc.

In conjunction with this report, there are 12 fund case studies online over the next three months, through February 2014. Each case study provides thorough context for the notion of performance by impact investing funds as well as insight into world-class learning organizations that have course corrected carefully throughout their lifespan.

‘Impact Investing 2.0: The Way Forward – Insight from 12 Outstanding Funds’ is designed to be a resource for the broad community interested in the future of impact investing, but especially for practitioners: fund managers, investors, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and advisors who are creating and managing new and existing funds, and striving to achieve successful social and financial performance.