![]() ![]() “Organizations are creating opportunities for all types of investors - individuals, businesses and institutions - to blend their capital to have an impact locally,” says Living Cities’ director of capital innovation, Eileen Neely. The fund has already made a $500,000 loan to Denver Pay for Success for a social finance bond aimed at tackling chronic homelessness in the Colorado city. In March the New York City–based not-for-profit Living Cities announced the launch of its Blended Catalyst Fund, a $31 million debt fund that tests innovative approaches to tackling social problems. Impact investments in cities is becoming increasingly sophisticated as demand grows from individual investors, foundations and other participants. “We recognize the potential to replicate and scale by region or impact theme.” ”We are intrigued with the Benefit Chicago innovation,” says Bert Feuss, who heads up investments for the foundation. Like Mazany’s organization, the $6.5 billion Silicon Valley Community Foundation, based in Mountain View, California, is focused on issues of local poverty and operates donor-advised funds. Benefit Brooklyn, for example, or Benefit Los Angeles. The Benefit Chicago model could be replicated in other cities and regions across the country and beyond. “That is a really important precedent that the Chicago Community Trust is setting for the $70 billion–plus donor-advised market,” says Calvert’s Kane. ![]() The trust has created donor-advised funds with backing from wealthy individuals and other investors and used the money to make charitable gifts to the city, but Mazany was keen to do more. “Terry Mazany is really committed to finding ways to spark more philanthropy and more impact of all kinds in the region,” she says. MacArthur’s Schwartz credits the trust’s CEO, Terry Mazany, with being instrumental in the formation of the new social impact fund. The Chicago Community Trust will invest $15 million in 15-year Benefit Chicago notes. Kane says she expects the initiative will raise money “from a really broad network of investors, including local and national banks with a Chicago interest or footprint, all the way to local residents or students or people who are from Chicago” but now live elsewhere and want to give back to their hometown. and abroad, is acting as the issuer of the Chicago notes. Calvert, which raises funds for community investing in the U.S. “The Calvert Foundation’s goal is to make the practice of impact investing as accessible as possible,” says Margot Kane, who heads up strategic planning and fundraising activities for the $300 million, Bethesda, Maryland–based foundation. Investors in the Calvert Foundation notes can expect to make annual returns of anywhere between 1 and 4 percent. The money raised will be used to make small loans to and investments in everything from low-income housing development to backing small businesses.īenefit Chicago is part of the growing impact investing sector, which seeks to use the tools of the capital markets to achieve social and environmental good, as well as to generate financial returns. Unusually for a social sector–lending fund, even retail investors who can invest as little as $20. Dubbed Benefit Chicago, the program, launched in conjunction with the Chicago Community Trust and the Calvert Foundation, will offer Calvert’s fixed-income securities of between one- and 15-year durations to investors. This week the MacArthur Foundation announced a new collaboration that aims to raise $100 million for impact investments in Chicago’s low-income inner city communities. The foundation’s latest initiative on behalf of urban renewal may be a touch of genius in its own right. ![]() MacArthur Foundation is best known for its so-called genius grants, generous no-strings-attached fellowships to artists, scientists, activists and other innovators. ![]()
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