Global Form Guide for the Impact Market

A new impact investing education and tracking platform aims to bring the fledgling movement to the global masses.

ImpactSpace is an open and free global database of companies, entrepreneurs and investors distinguished by intent to achieve both a positive social, cultural or environmental benefit along with some measure of financial return.

Two weeks after its launch, the current index includes data on over 2,200 impact enterprises, 230 impact investors, 1,300 impact investment deals and 1,100 people in the global impact market.

Supported by social finance media platform Impact IQ and managed as a freely-licensed, public-good project, the site also offers an index of resources in each category, curated for startup and growth companies, individual and institutional investors, financial advisors and wealth managers.

Announcing the database, Impact IQ CEO David Bank compared the project to technology resource platform Crunchbase and said the information on offer was relevant for both newcomers and experts.

“ImpactSpace begins to meet the impact community’s oft-cited need for a real picture of the companies, investors and actual transactions — the deals getting done — that are intended to generate social and environmental benefits as well as financial returns,” he said.

“The mission of ImpactSpace is to accelerate impact investing by making information about the impact market available to everyone and maintainable by anyone.”

To begin with the platform will emphasise early-stage social ventures but plans to grow to cover all deal structures and stages.

People in the industry are encouraged to sign up to submit basic data and create and edit profiles of impact companies, impact investors and their own company.

ImpactSpace encourages people to go "on the record" with their data to achieve transparency, accountability, insight and validation for the impact investing market.

A report released in April on the impact investing movement in Australia echoed this.

“Significantly more information is available—with a higher degree of transparency and

comparability about social, cultural and environmental performance of investments—

to inform risk management and decision making,” the report said.

The report, Impact Australia – investment for social and economic benefit by Social Innovation Strategist Rosemary Addis from the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations suggested the Impact Investment market in Australia was still in its early stages but showed great potential for growth.

It suggested there was representation in the impact investing field in Australia from across the range of possible investors: individuals; family offices; philanthropic foundations; corporations; banks; community finance intermediaries; institutional investors, including superannuation funds; and governments – but activity was limited to a small number of “first movers” in each group.

The movement is fast growing globally, with international data showing potential for growth of up to 38 per cent annually, the report said.

Visit ImpactSpace here.