Essentials of Impact Investing: a Guide for Small-Staffed Foundations

Impact investing has the potential to enable every foundation, regardless of size, to pursue its philanthropic mission more effectively. It can help individual donors, families, foundations with few or no staff, and all sorts of giving entities put more and different types of capital to work for social good. Even better, it can deliver philanthropic impact alongside financial returns—which can enable reinvestment of those funds in pursuit of even more social good. This guide provides an overview of impact investing, steps to prepare for engaging in impact investing, and examples of foundations that have used impact investing as an essential tool for their work.