The Impact World this Week: 5 September 2025

UK: Social investor UnLtd is planning to invest its £175m endowment in line with its mission, it announced this week. UnLtd supports social entrepreneurs and charities thanks to income from the Millennium Awards Trust endowment, which was until now invested with an aim to maximise returns in order to fund the organisation’s charitable activities. But UnLtd has now revised its investment policy “to make a commitment to sustainable investing and introduce impact investing into the portfolio wherever possible”, CEO Mark Norbury and investment committee chair Jamie Broderick wrote in Charity Finance. The portfolio shift should take “a year or two”.

Global: The Net Zero Banking Alliance is suspending operations and considering a new model following an exodus of its members in the past few months. The UN-backed initiative launched in 2021 to support banks to address the impacts of climate change and associated economic impacts, and required members to commit to reaching net zero targets by 2050. The alliance numbered 144 banks by October 2024, including the world’s top banks such as Bank of America, JP Morgan, BNP Paribas and Mitsubishi UFJ. But in recent months, a large number of members decided to quit the initiative – many due to pressure from right-wing politicians, while others, like Triodos Bank, left due to the alliance abandoning its most ambitious climate goals.

Europe: Don’t miss your chance to watch Underseen, the “impact film” that tells the story of Museum in the Dark, a Ukrainian social enterprise that enables visually impaired people to convey how their world appears to sighted people. Produced by Impact Europe, the documentary looks at how founder Alina is navigating the challenges of operating a social enterprise during wartime, including moving from Kyiv to Lviv. After a tour of private screenings in the past few months, it is now available for all to see on this link.

• Read more: The resilience of Ukrainian social entrepreneurs

UK: The Government Outcomes Lab (GO Lab) has published its final evaluation of the Life Chances Fund, a £70m outcomes fund launched in 2016 by the UK government to address complex social challenges. According to the study, one the fund’s most reported accomplishments was a shift in focus to outcomes among service commissioners and providers, influencing how they will approach future projects: more than half of commissioners said they intend to adopt long-term contracts and pre-defined outcomes metrics, while a majority of providers intended to adopt all elements of social outcomes contracts’ approach. The Life Chances Fund is considered a predecessor of the Better Futures Fund, a £500m outcomes fund launched by the UK government this year to support disadvantaged children and young people.

• Read more: UK government announces £500m social outcomes fund to support vulnerable children

New Zealand: The country’s Impact Investing Network is to merge with the Responsible Investment Association Australasia (RIAA), the region’s largest network of individuals and organisations engaged in sustainable and impact finance, which numbers 500 members across Australia and New Zealand. The change will take place at the end of this month; Impact Investing Network’s activities including events, communications and collaborations with communities will continue as usual, but they will now be administered by RIAA. 

Global: a new investment fund for social enterprises addressing food insecurity in the Global South has been launched by Bayer Foundation and the United Nations Capital Development Fund. The Food Systems Innovation Finance Facility will provide flexible loans and guarantees to small and medium enterprises that help develop sustainable and secure food value chains through innovation, particularly in “high-risk” regions in South America, Africa and Asia Pacific. Bayer Foundation has committed US$4.5m to the facility, which aims to attract capital from other foundations and state-backed funders like development agencies. The first investments are expected to take place this year, according to Bayer Foundation.

Africa: How are governments, civil society, the private sector, academia and international organisations working together to achieve the SDGs in Africa? That’s the focus of a new study published by the African Venture Philanthropy Alliance (AVPA). The Pan African Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships Ecosystem Research Report, which features Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana and Senegal as specific case studies, seeks to understand the dynamics in philanthropic engagement on the continent. The researchers identified challenges similar to those in other developing markets, such as complex regulation, lack of data, power imbalance between funders and actors on the ground, rigid funding models and a lack of co-operation and trust between stakeholders. The report recommends more flexibility in funding, better governance within partnerships and policy advocacy to build support from governments. 

Figure of the week: US$7m is the investment secured by sustainable palm oil producer Planting Naturals from impact investor AgDevCo. Operating in Sierra Leone, Planting Naturals produces organic palm oil from its own plantations and about 8,000 smallholder farmers, whom it also trains in sustainable agricultural practices, according to AgDevCo.

Movers and Shakers

• Big Issue Invest has appointed Holger Westphely as new managing director. Westphely, who had been head of lending at the social investor since 2022, has previously worked at Schroders and CAF Venturesome, and co-founded Eastside People. He succeeds Danyal Sattar. 
• Blackrock CEO Larry Fink and billionaire philanthropist André Hoffmann have become interim co-chairs of the World Economic Forum. They succeed Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, who took the role of interim chairman following the resignation of founder Klaus Schwab among allegations of misconduct in April. (WEF said an internal allegation did not find any evidence of wrongdoing by Schwab nor his wife Hilde.)
• Paul Kissack is stepping down as group CEO of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation - Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust after five years. He will become permanent secretary at the UK government’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
• Unity Trust Bank appointed Martin Barrett as its chief operating officer. He previously worked at Lloyds Banking Group for more than two decades, lately as managing director of banking operations.
• The National Centre for Social Research has appointed four new trustees including James Brooks (COO of market research firm Kantar), prof. Alison Park (executive chair of ESRC), prof. Ian Rivers (University of Strathclyde) and Nina Skero (CEO of economics consultancy Cebr).

In case you missed it: 

Global: The latest cohort of the 100x Impact Accelerator has been revealed, with 15 social ventures with potential to become “unicorns” joining the programme. The accelerator run by the London School of Economics targets innovative social enterprises or nonprofits from around the world in their scale-up phase, and provides them with £150,000 in catalytic capital and a 12-week programme of bespoke support and mentoring. Among the chosen organisations are 1% for the Planet, OpenStreetMap and Red Dot Foundation.

• Read our interview with 1% for the Planet CEO Kate Williams