The Impact World this Week: 24 July 2025

UK: Securing impact investments for specific areas using a place-based investment approach is “likely to take much longer than originally intended”, according to an evaluation commissioned by the UK government on the Impact Investing Institute’s work to develop place-based impact investing. This approach directs investments towards specific places to generate positive social and environmental impact for local communities alongside financial returns.

The £1m programme, which ran over three years and which was funded by the government, included the development of two pilot projects – in Wakefield and Southampton – where the Institute connected local authorities with potential investors in local opportunities. 

While stakeholders showed optimism about the potential for their areas to see increased investment, the report found “no evidence of additional capital being allocated to [pilot] areas for specific investment opportunities identified through the [pilot] activity”. The report concludes that “a key learning was that investment outcomes for places are likely to take much longer than originally intended, due to various factors such as planning permissions and land ownership”.

The programme however succeeded in increasing awareness, knowledge and interest in place-based impact investing, and drove investment into community development finance institutions (CDFIs) through capacity building and its role in developing specific funds. 

• Read more: What is place-based impact investing?

US: OpenAI has launched a US$50m fund to support nonprofit and community organisations to “scale impact and foster innovation by leveraging AI’s transformative potential” in areas including community organising, economic opportunity, education and healthcare. The move comes as a response to the recommendations of an independent commission set up to advise the strategy of the nonprofit body overseeing OpenAI, which suggested the board invest the nonprofit’s capital to drive innovation “in the systems of everyday life”. The commission, made up of non-profit and philanthropy experts, also called for the establishment of an “emergency fund to stabilise the civic ecosystem” in the face of changes brought about by AI – as “major institutions are retreating from public interest” and “critical philanthropic infrastructure" collapses. The commission suggests OpenAI could use a mix of grantmaking, technical assistance and catalytic capital to achieve its objectives.

UK: A record 8,376 new community interest companies (CICs) were incorporated during the 2024-25 financial year, according to the Regulator of Community Interest Companies Annual Report. This brings the total CICs registered to just over 37,000 as of March 2025, an increase of 12% year-on-year, despite an increase in dissolutions. Nearly a quarter of CICs registered when the legal structure was first established in 2022 are still on the register.

UK: NatWest Social & Community Capital committed £1.9m to 19 social enterprises during 2024. The social lender, which is Pioneers Post’s partner in delivering the SE100 and WISE100 initiatives, celebrated its 25th anniversary during the year, highlights its latest annual report. Its investments currently focus on Scotland, the Midlands and the north west of England, and its total loan portfolio stands at £2.9m.  

Asia: An estimated 773,000 women and girls are expected to benefit from the issuance of Impact Investment Exchange’s latest gender-lens impact investing bond. The Women’s Livelihood Bond 7 (WLB7), launched on 18 July, will invest in impact enterprises operated by underserved communities and women in India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka, across themes such as financial inclusion, water and sanitation, agriculture and clean energy. IIX says it expects the bond to be the largest of its Women’s Livelihood Bond series launched in 2017, which have raised an aggregated US$228m in private capital to date, creating a positive impact on 160m people,, with zero credit defaults, according to IIX. The Women’s Livelihood Bond 6 raised US$100m.

Global: If you think there are too many organisations trying to create universal impact valuation tools, this will reassure you. The Capitals Coalition and the International Foundation for Valuing Impacts (IFVI) are merging into a single entity, to “accelerate the integration of impact accounting for value creation”. IFVI was launched in 2022 to continue Harvard Business School’s work to develop an impact accounting framework – a way of translating impact into monetary value and including it in companies’ accounts. Similarly, the Capitals Coalition develops an accounting system so that all types of capital (not just money) can be considered in decision-making. The merger aims to “reduce fragmentation, scale the uptake of impact accounting for value creation, and drive systemic change in how businesses, investors, and regulators make decisions”, according to the announcement. It is not clear who ate who, but André Hoffman, Capitals Coalition chair, will chair the merged entity, while Sir Ronald Cohen, chair of IFVI, will be vice-chair.

Global: Heading for Change, the climate and gender-focused endowment fund created by late gender-lens investing pioneer Suzanne Biegel, has completed its portfolio, numbering 18 impact funds across Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and indigenous communities in North America. The six latest investments, announced this week, include Regenera Ventures I, a women-led impact fund that invests into nature-positive solutions to strengthen biodiversity in Mexico, and Sahara Impact Ventures Fund I, which invests in tech SMEs supporting the just transition through sustainable food systems, clean energy and access to finance. ‘Chief catalyst’ Sana Kapadia said the portfolio illustrated “how climate and gender integration is applied across the climate value chain as well as the investment lifecycle”.

• Read more: Skoll and Laudes foundations back Biegel’s Heading for Change legacy project

Palestine: If, like many others, you are left feeling helpless by the crisis in Gaza, BuildPalestine’s new website demonstrates how supporters can provide immediate support to the people and communities of Palestine. BuildPalestine is a social enterprise focused on supporting social innovation within the region. The website, launched last week, includes a searchable directory of social entrepreneurs in Palestine and a library of resources that enables people to learn about and engage with  locally-led initiatives.

• Read more: We wrote about BuildPalestine's work during the ceasefire earlier this year. Although the situation in Gaza has deteriorated since the end of the ceasefire, BuildPalestine's Nourishing Hope in Gaza programme, which we profiled in the article, continues to operate.

Figure of the week: US$125bn is the value of a proposed fund the Brazilian government wants to launch when it hosts COP30 in November. The Tropical Forest Forever Facility fund would incentivise the 70 countries that collectively contain 1bn hectares of tropical forests to keep trees standing. Every year, those countries would be paid US$4 for each hectare that remains forested. Countries that lose forests would lose money, and those that recover forests would be paid more. The Tropical Forest Forever Facility would aim to raise funds through loans from high-income countries, the World Bank, nonprofit organisations, market investors and others. The Brazilian government is proposing to channel 20% of the funding to Indigenous and local communities, or US$800m each year.

Europe: You can now browse Euclid Network’s latest European Social Enterprise Monitor in full on the organisation’s website. The biennial study, now in its third edition for 2023-24, surveyed the 1,800 European social enterprises across 31 countries. The lack of political backing emerged as one of the main concerns for the sector, with 70% of respondents considering there was no, very low or low political support for social entrepreneurship. The study was launched in Davos in January – read our story to explore the findings in depth.

Movers and Shakers

• Erinch Sahan will lead the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s new mission-aligned investment approach for its £400m endowment when he takes up his new role as associate director of investment in September this year. He moves from the Doughnut Economics Action Lab (DEAL) where he is currently business and enterprise lead.

Top image - Wakefield credit: Dave43251 mages via Flickr. .