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Family Office Elite Magazine, the wealthiest audience in the world. Family Office Elite Magazine is a very high class bespoke publication and a porthole to the ultra-wealthy family offices and UHNWI sectors. The magazine includes editorials from recent events and experts from the ultra-wealthy Family Office community.
Family Office Elite Magazine, the wealthiest audience in the world.
Family Office Elite Magazine is a very high class bespoke publication and a porthole to the ultra-wealthy family offices and UHNWI sectors. The magazine includes editorials from recent events and experts from the ultra-wealthy Family Office community.
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to control where their money goes.’ These ideas were<br />
underlined by a Dutch philanthropist and social investor<br />
interviewed for the book, who said that ‘social impact is<br />
new for our family. It combines two things - doing good,<br />
and you can reuse money multiple times. We are an<br />
entrepreneurial family, so we like the entrepreneurial<br />
logic, the discipline, and rigour. With a social impact<br />
approach, you become co-owner rather than just<br />
donor’. But there are nuances, and this philanthropist<br />
is not solely interested in impact; his motivations mix<br />
giving with the measures of efficiency that impact<br />
offers. ‘Social impact is a complement to [traditional]<br />
donations. We have been an impact-first social investor<br />
for a long time.’<br />
IMPACT, THE PROFESSIONAL APPROACH<br />
Impact could be a way of expressing your professional<br />
status – ‘professionalism through impact measurement’<br />
as Serge Raicher, co-founder of EVPA expresses it.<br />
Funders, fundraisers, and staff in the field have ‘become<br />
more professional,’ says Arnout Mertens, General<br />
Director of Support Services at Salvatorian Fathers and<br />
Brothers in Rome. ‘We are moving away from charity<br />
to impact. Governments are imposing more stringent<br />
rules. They don’t fund without a needs assessment,<br />
and if we don’t have a financial [management] manual<br />
in place then the project does not get the grant. We<br />
need three quotes for bills of quantity - in places where<br />
even basic literacy may be a problem. There are visits<br />
from funding organisations, financial audits… There has<br />
been a significant change in funder attitudes over the<br />
past two years.’ Arnout debates the practicality of all<br />
of this. Salvatorian Fathers and Brothers work in what<br />
he describes as ‘forgotten places’ – the lost villages of<br />
the Global South. Data gathering, reliable monitoring,<br />
long-term impact evaluation are all very hard to achieve<br />
when there is no electrical power, no or few literate<br />
adults and the constant threat of natural or human<br />
disaster.<br />
That view is seconded by Marie-Stéphane Maradeix,<br />
CEO (Déléguée générale) of the Fondation Daniel et<br />
Nina Carasso, a philanthropic foundation based in Paris<br />
and Madrid which derives from the family that owned<br />
Danone, the dairy foods company. She illustrates the<br />
difficulties and contradictions inherent in measuring<br />
philanthropy; ‘There is a real demand [amongst<br />
philanthropists] to understand impact. They are used to<br />
working with KPIs [Key Performance Indicators]. When<br />
[the foundation board] interviewed me [for this job]<br />
they asked me about KPIs. I said that the foundation<br />
was working with complex social and/or cultural issues<br />
which are not always measurable in the way that an<br />
industrial product can be measured. Measuring social<br />
impact needs a long-term vision that is not always<br />
compatible with short-term projects.’<br />
INVESTMENT, SUSTAINABILITY, AND IMPACT<br />
Impact is part of a convergence of ideas. It has emerged<br />
as the basis for a class of investment. Investment<br />
with impact – that creates both financial and social or<br />
environmental value – is a fast growing class of assets.<br />
The annual J.P. Morgan/Global Impact Investing Network<br />
(GIIN) survey of the sector for 2015 (Saltuk, 2015)<br />
reports a 7% growth in capital committed between<br />
2013-2014 and a 13% growth in the number of deals,<br />
with survey respondents managing a total of US$60<br />
billion in impact investments.<br />
Through the growth of impact investments more and<br />
more people were arguing that every investment has<br />
an impact, the only questions are weather this impact<br />
is positive or negative. And many people would argue<br />
today that we are at a point in human history, where we<br />
cannot afford more investments with negative impact.<br />
FOUNDATIONS OF IMPACT<br />
Foundations in Europe seek impact in their grantmaking,<br />
but they are increasingly also seeking it in<br />
their investments. This is a radical departure for a<br />
foundation sector in Europe that has, for years, focused<br />
only on the financial, and not on the social returns from<br />
its investments. That requirement was laid down in<br />
regulations – until 2011, for example, the UK Charity<br />
Commission guidance to trustees was to maximise<br />
financial returns. In that year, the Commission issued<br />
new guidelines ‘on investments that help the charity<br />
to achieve its mission where this has no significant<br />
financial detriment (mission related investment)’. This<br />
new guidance allowed foundations in the UK to make<br />
impact investments. As is often the case, the US had<br />
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