A Year in Review

Happy New Year! With 2019 coming to an end, we immediately set our sights on 2020 but first we wanted to take a moment to reflect on a number of significant milestones over the last year. The following list contains a number of items that would be non-events for many funds but for us they were firsts and felt worthy of celebration. These highlights are also accompanied by feelings of gratitude for all the help and support we received along the way. 

Jan - Investment number four in Inkblot
Feb - First annual report created for our LP's
Mar - Final close for the fund at our $10M cap
Apr - Closed legals, capital call for new LP's and first LPAC meeting
May - Investment number five in Clir
Jun - Launched volunteer program to support founders
Jul - Investment number six in ChopValue
Aug - GoJava follow-on investment, support Greta and climate action movement
Sep - Investment number seven in Sametrica, capital call, Clir investment converts on Series A 
Oct - Attend SFF conference and speak at CAIA conference about impact, capital call
Nov - Investment number eight in Social Nature, official Jaza close, Keela follow-on investment
Dec - Inkblot follow-on investment, Trish Nixon joins as advisor

We already have some lofty goals for 2020 and we're excited about what this year will bring. We hope it's a prosperous and high impact year for all of you!

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Big Banks Commit Big Money to Climate

At Active Impact, our mission is to help facilitate the flow of capital to environmental and social good. We are encouraged to see signs that big financial institutions may be looking to also become more aligned with that mission. A recent article by Bill McKibben of 360.org published in the New Yorker highlighted the fact that the money provided by big banks to finance fossil fuel projects was the "the oxygen on which the fire of global warming burns". The point was that GHG emission reduction requires a commitment from the banks to stop financing big projects that pollute. In September, the Global Alliance on Banking Values announced that over 50 participating financial institutions representing $2.9 trillion in assets had committed to measure and disclose carbon emissions associated with their loans and investments. This is a positive first step to reducing such lending activity. Canadian banks are also promising to commit to environmental sustainability initiatives. For example, CIBC recently promised $150B for environmental and sustainable financing activities by 2027 and BMO committed $400B to sustainable financing activities by 2025, including the intention to create a $250M impact investment fund to find and scale solutions to sustainability problems. Capital diverted from negative to positive use will be a massive catalyst for change!

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