ImpactAlpha Open: Sustainable Fashion, Policy for Ownership Economy, Investments in Climate+Gender

Greetings Agents of Impact!

Welcome to the latest ImpactAlpha Open, our free weekly newsletter that keeps you in the know and ahead of the curve in impact investing and sustainable finance.

This is a condensed version of ImpactAlpha Open. To get the full version – including people moves, job listings, meetups and offers – delivered to your inbox each Tuesday, sign up here.

In this week’s Open:

• Disrupting the $3 trillion fashion industry
• Seven policy planks for the ownership economy
• African capital for African infrastructure
• Inclusive impact management and other short signals

Let’s dig in. – Dennis Price

Must-reads on ImpactAlpha

• Disrupting fashion with sustainability and authenticity. Changing consumer tastes are giving impact investors an opportunity to disrupt the $3 trillion global fashion industry around sustainability and authenticity. Rather than betting on brands, VCs are investing in the materials, operations and software that may define the future of all brands. See how .
• Policy plants for the ownership economy. Alison Lingane has rounded up practical public policy planks to mobilize dramatically more private capital for the ownership economy, as David Bank reports. Lingane says her new Ownership Capital Lab is “a field-level effort to help bring that marketplace to increased maturity so we can see more capital flowing, more deals being done.” Check it out .?
• African capital for African infrastructure. In Africa, USAID Invest has mobilized infrastructure investments from African pension funds and insurers by bundling projects and investors, largely without concessional financing, the agency’s Natalie Alm and Dipika Chawla report in a guest post. Read more .
• Raising for climate + nature + gender. Across emerging markets, climate and gender angles have become table stakes for fund managers seeking to attract investors, Jessica Pothering and Lucy Ngige wrote in this month’s Liist of actively raising impact funds. See who’s raising . View ImpactAlpha’s full Liist of open funds .
• Diversity outperformance data. As You Sow’s Andrew Behar and Whistle Stop Capital’s Meredith R. Benton turn the tables on critics of so-called diversity, equity and inclusion. As part of the series Fiduciary Future, they argue that it’s corporations retreating from their diversity commitments that are undermining the meritocracy – and shareholder value. Hear them out .

The Week's Podcast

?? This Week in Impact: Policy planks for the ownership economy

Host Brian Walsh takes up ImpactAlpha’s top stories with editor David Bank. Up this week: bipartisan policies to mobilize private financing for transitions to worker ownership; African capital for African infrastructure; and the legal risks of backpedaling on corporate diversity commitments.

Listen to the new episode of This Week in Impact . Get the podcast in your feed by subscribing on Apple or Spotify . Catch up on all of the podcasts on the ImpactAlpha Podcast Network .

This is a condensed version of ImpactAlpha Open.

Sign up to get ImpactAlpha Open in your inbox each Tuesday – including people moves, job listings, short signals, meetups and offers.

Curated by Dennis Price and Isaac Silk at ImpactAlpha