Foundations and Endowments: From Immediate Response to Long-Term Recovery

Moderator: Peter Cafferkey, Country Representative - Ireland and the United Kingdom, EVPA

Speakers:

• Anita Bhatia, Investment Director, Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity
• Gorka Goikoetxea, CFO & ESG Endowment Manager, Anesvad Foundation
• Lisa Jordan, Managing Director, DRK Foundation

COVID-19 urged an immediate response to the crisis while providing foundations with new opportunities to advance their vision of more just societies. Against this background, this panel focused on how COVID-19 has influenced endowment allocation towards impact investments. The panelists discussed how value-based organizations could transform traditional parts of their foundation's endowment to align them with their Program Related Investments.

Based on these discussions, the panel's main take-aways concern the need for foundations to recognize the opportunities that impact investing presents in contributing to their mission. However, it is essential to keep in mind that impact investing is a new field, "just being pioneered."

Achieving maximum impact requires collaboration between disciplines and among actors within the industry. Additionally, the panelists spoke about the importance of choosing a practical measurement framework that enables foundations to communicate their general impact themes along with more detailed impact outcomes including additionality.

The panel incorporated main insights from the following two reports:

1.      Social Impact Report (Anesvad,2018)

2.      Impact investing at Guy's and St Thomas' Charity (Guy's & St Thomas, 2020)

About Phenix Virtual Impact Summit:

Phenix Virtual Impact Summit is a highly curated virtual conference that enables institutional investors and asset owners to share knowledge, exchange best practices and navigate the opportunities within impact investing industry.  

All information and Recordings of the Virtual Impact Summit 2020 are the proprietary products of and owned by Phenix Capital. The reproduction, misuse, dissemination or modification is strictly prohibited without the knowledge and permission of Phenix Capital.

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