Private impact fundraising nosedives from 2022 to 2024 – latest PitchBook report

Annual fundraising for private impact funds dropped by nearly 50% between 2022 and 2024, according to a new report by private markets data provider PitchBook.

The 2025 Impact Investing Update, based on a dataset of 5,000 funds making impact investments in private markets, shows that 220 impact funds raised US$82.6bn in 2024, down from an all-time high of US$161.4bn raised by 463 funds in 2022.

PitchBook data looks at private market investments including private equity, venture capital, real estate, real assets (such as infrastructure, natural resources and agriculture), private debt and funds of funds, up to September 2025

The report’s authors, however, point out that some smaller funds can take longer to be identified by researchers, and past experience suggests the 2024 figure could reach around US$95.5bn raised by 548 impact funds – still a 40% drop on 2022 capital flows, albeit by a record number of funds. 

Fundraising for private investment funds as a whole dropped over the same period, although much less dramatically than for impact funds, showing a reduction of 18.7%.

The drop in fundraising aligns with wider negative trends in impact investing. Last year a survey by the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) showed impact investment volumes were down 30% year-on-year in 2024, while data from Dealroom revealed investments in impact startups fell by 63% in the past four years.

• Read more: Global volume of capital invested in impact deals in 2024 falls by 30% compared with previous year

The report shows private impact funds currently manage just over US$1tn, a record high – although growth has stalled in recent years. This includes just over one-fifth (US$213.2bn) in “dry powder” money available to be invested. 

The figure is lower than the GIIN’s latest estimate of US$1.51tn because the GIIN includes some investment products that are not included in private market structures, like public equity.

Real assets over-represented

According to the report, most common investment strategies for impact funds are venture capital, real assets and private equity, representing 42.1%, 19.4% and 18.2% of the total number of impact funds closed since 2008, respectively.

The report finds that there is no clear indication that impact funds had a lower financial performance than non-impact funds; but, the researchers point out, the picture was complex and conclusions difficult to make.

Real assets funds – mostly infrastructure funds (for example renewable energy, or health or education infrastructure for example) – account for a much larger share of fund count in the impact universe than in private markets as a whole, where it accounts for just 3.8% of funds. 

The report’s authors suggest this is explained by the fact that infrastructure funds often have an impact element linked to them, such as producing cleaner energy. Due to the fact that real asset projects require large amounts of investment, real assets funds represent nearly two-thirds of capital raised by impact funds since 2008.

Financial tradeoff for impact ‘not universal’

A straight comparison of the financial performance of impact and non-impact funds shows that rates of return for impact funds are on average lower; however, the report authors warned not to compare like for like that given the very different strategy mix of impact funds and private funds as a whole. 

For example, they note, impact funds have a much higher proportion of real assets (mostly infrastructure) funds, which have been the worst-performing strategy in private markets over the past decade. This quirk alone could explain underperformance – regardless of impact. 

A trade-off of impact versus financial gains is not universal: many impact funds outperform many non-impact funds

The researchers aimed to build a more accurate picture by comparing fund performance to a “benchmark” set for each type of strategy (VC, debt, real assets, etc) and calculate “excess returns” accordingly, preventing the weightings of different strategies to skew the result. 

The result shows at the median level, impact and non-impact funds perform similarly; impact funds tend to perform less well on the top quintiles and worse on the bottom quintiles, painting a slightly less attractive picture; but at the same time many impact funds are outperforming non-impact ones. 

“Performance data on impact funds could be read multiple ways to support different narratives, but a trade-off of impact versus financial gains is not universal: many impact funds outperform many non-impact funds,” says the report. 

Impact fundraising around the world

The research estimates impact funds constitute 6.8% of all private market assets raised globally between 2008 and September 2025.

North America was the most active region for impact fundraising between 2008 and September 2025, accounting for 43% of global impact capital raised. Europe represents a larger proportion of capital raised by impact funds (37.6%) than by private funds as a whole (24%). The reverse is true of North America, which accounts for 43.6% of impact fundraising and 56% of private fundraising as a whole.  

Africa represents a bigger share of impact fundraising than of private fundraising overall (2.1% compared with 0.4%), and impact funds represent a third of the continent’s private market funds closed since 2008.

The most common impact categories (mapped against the GIIN’s IRIS+ taxonomy) are climate, energy, and diversity and inclusion. The report notes that, interestingly, the share of capital raised by funds targeting diversity and inclusion grew to its highest in 2025, despite political pushback on the issue.

• Read more: Social enterprises in the UK push forward diversity efforts in challenging times

Top image: Impact fundraising activity per year, up to September 2025. Source: PitchBook, 2025 Impact Investing Update.