"We seek to examine founder gender preferences in the context of equity crowdfunding, which represents a direct counterpart to traditional equity financing and which is a "higher-stakes" context than rewards-based crowdfunding. More specifically, we explore whether founder gender preferences, if they exist, vary based on the gender and the experience of the investor. Through a randomized field experiment, we find that inexperienced female investors are significantly more interested (138%) in ventures with female founders than those with male founders; however, we do not observe founder gender preferences among experienced female investors. For male investors, we do not observe differences in interest in investing based on founder gender or investor experience. We thus confirm that the gender gaps observed in traditional equity funding do not apply to equity crowdfunding. Further, we theorize that the mechanisms proposed in previous research in low-stakes crowdfunding decision contexts, such as the use of founder gender as a heuristic and participation in activism homophily, that drive female investors to prefer female founders may not apply to experienced investors in higher-stakes equity crowdfunding. The results from a follow-up survey of the study participants provide support for our theoretical arguments."

"This study is the first piece of detailed research on gender lens investing in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). It adds to other regional analyses of gender lens investing emerging in the last few years in Asia and in Europe (authored by the same team as this report at the ESADE Institute for Social Innovation). The specific objectives of the study are to: describe the opportunity for different gender lens investing strategies in LAC; highlight key case studies and current activities in LAC; and offer top-level recommendations for how different players can put gender lens investing into practice."

"We study gender and race in high-impact entrepreneurship using a tightly controlled randomized field experiment. We sent out 80,000 pitch emails introducing promising but fictitious start-ups to 28,000 venture capitalists and angels. Each email was sent by a fictitious entrepreneur with randomly assigned gender and race. Female entrepreneurs received 9% more interested replies than males pitching identical projects and Asians received 6% more than Whites. Our results suggest that investors do not discriminate against female or Asian entrepreneurs when evaluating unsolicited pitch emails and that future research on investor biases should focus on networks and in-person interactions."

"The GIIN has published Getting Started with IRIS, a guide to help impact investors select and apply social, environmental, and financial performance metrics from the IRIS catalog. IRIS contains more than 400 generally-accepted performance metrics, including metrics commonly used in impact sectors such as agriculture, energy, health, and financial services."

"This report has focused on developing an in-depth, demand-side understanding of the needs and challenges facing inclusive businesses, rather than on studying the drivers and constraints of grantmakers and investors. However, we acknowledge that the latter is a valuable area for further study and action going forward.

The key themes discussed here are based on the sum of Monitor's extensive research into more than 700 inclusive businesses in Africa and India, and Acumen Fund's decade of experience as a pioneering impact investor. They also draw together the experiences and observations of dozens of impact investors, grant funders, academics and other experts."

"From Ideas to Practice, Pilots to Strategy is the second publication in the Forum's Mainstreaming Impact Investing Initiative. The report takes a deeper look at why and how asset owners began to include impact investing in their portfolios and continue to do so today, and how they overcame operational and cultural constraints affecting capital flow. Given that impact investing expertise is spread among dozens if not hundreds of practitioners and academics, the report is a curation of some -but certainly not all -of those leading voices. The 15 articles are meant to provide investors, intermediaries and policy-makers with actionable insights on how to incorporate impact investing into their work."

"Many investors and entrepreneurs are using creative ways to deploy financial capital in service of the world’s most intractable challenges, achieving both financial and social returns. This practice is known as “impact investing.” As impact investing spreads and becomes more commonplace, education and training will be increasingly crucial for investors and practitioners to access the knowledge and skills they need for success."

"A social impact bond (SIB) is a new approach for scaling social programs. Currently being piloted in the United Kingdom and generating interest globally, a SIB is a multistakeholder partnership in which philanthropic funders and impact investors—not governments—take on the financial risk of expanding preventive programs that help poor and vulnerable people. Nonprofits deliver the program to more people who need it; the government pays only if the program succeeds. Because the concept of a SIB is so new (the first and only SIB is the UK pilot mentioned above), information about how—and how well—this approach could work is very limited. In this report, the most thoroughly researched study of SIBs to date, we explain how SIBs are structured, assess their potential in two specific program areas (homelessness and criminal justice), describe the various stakeholder groups involved, and present the results of a pro forma analysis of a hypothetical SIB."

"This report is aimed specifically at helping social sector funders use their resources in the best possible way. It helps them understand if, when and how to use the different financial instruments available to support social entrepreneurs in the most efficient and effective way. It also helps clarify what hybrid finance is, and how it can be used to channel more resources towards social entrepreneurship, in a more effective manner, while highlighting some of the challenges this practice brings about."

"The following report builds upon desk research as well as key observations from the workshop, "Financing Renewable Energy in South East Asia" workshop held in Phnom Penh in December, 2017. The event was an opportunity to address the current challenges entrepreneurs face when trying to access finance in SEA (with a geographic focus on Cambodia and Myanmar). We hope that this work will educate entrepreneurs on the type of financing available to them as well as serve as a reference for donors on why certain financing schemes are relevant and more successful in the RE sector and in the SEA region."