Our foundation began impact investing with a lot of passion but not a lot of direct experience, so we knew had a great deal to learn. Ultimately, we were hungry to learn alongside mission-aligned, like-minded people doing the actual work in the field. We found working with larger-staffed foundations that have dedicated mission-related investing staff has been one of the more effective ways we’ve learned about this important work.
We’ve built meaningful relationships with staff members who focus on impact investing in larger organizations, which has given us access to important discussions about strategy and long-term impact that otherwise we might not have had. For example, last year the Kellogg Foundation’s mission-driven investing team invited us to an internal learning session with Social Finance US; we were able to share the notes from the session with other small-staffed foundation colleagues.
We’ve also learned by co-investing. One of our first co-investments was with our long-term partners at the Kresge Foundation in a fund focused on housing in downtown Detroit, the Woodward Corridor Investment Fund.
Partnering with other foundations allowed us to quickly learn and be more efficient with our investments.
