Impact investing is fully integrated within GEM’s investment process and infrastructure, in contrast to firms where impact is separate and often secondary to the core work of the firm. Our impact team sits within GEM’s investment team, where they underwrite the impact of every investment to better inform portfolio decisions.2
Rigor is critical. Developed in 2019, the GEM Impact Management Project (IMP) Framework provides a structure through which we can proactively assess the impact of every investment on key stakeholders — customers, employees, supply chain, communities, and the planet — regardless of whether the impact is financially material. We also measure the diversity and racial and social equity of every investment at GEM.1, 2, 3
We operate with the size and scale of a large endowment. This provides organizations of varying sizes looking to integrate impact within their portfolio the scale and research capabilities necessary to underwrite a sophisticated impact investment approach and portfolio. Our approach helps enable clients to scale their impact allocation from as little as a small portion of a portfolio to their total portfolio allocation while building on our conviction that returns do not have to be sacrificed.4
Simply put, institutional investors cannot invest for impact at the expense of financial returns. We place impact outcomes alongside investment returns and pursue both simultaneously, including what we believe to be alpha-rich opportunities that have been overlooked or underappreciated by traditional investors.4
Capitalism has delivered many positive outcomes, but it has not served everyone in the same way. We invest in people and ideas that are working across industries and ecosystems to transform our world.
We seek to reimagine what’s possible for the consumers, workers, and communities affected by our investments. We continually ask how these innovations and ideas can provide more benefit while avoiding harm.
While some approaches to impact investing focus on allocating a portion of a portfolio to impact, we enable our clients to align their entire portfolios with their impact objectives and values if they so choose.
Capitalism has delivered many positive outcomes, but it has not served everyone in the same way. We invest in people and ideas that are working across industries and ecosystems to transform our world.
We seek to reimagine what’s possible for the consumers, workers, and communities affected by our investments. We continually ask how these innovations and ideas can provide more benefit while avoiding harm.
While some approaches to impact investing focus on allocating a portion of a portfolio to impact, we enable our clients to align their entire portfolios with their impact objectives and values if they so choose.
In 2019, we partnered with the team at Bridges Impact Advisory to create the innovative GEM IMP Framework. The partnership established our firm as a leader in rigorous, authentic impact investing, and plays a key role in supporting our clients focused on values-based investing. We apply the framework to measure the impact of investments on five key stakeholder groups.
Learn about our framework
Customers
Planet
Employees
Supply Chain
Community
We seek managers from a variety of backgrounds, identities, and cultures, particularly individuals who identify as non-white and/or non-male.
We consider how racial and social identities affect opportunities for groups historically excluded or harmed by the investment industry, such as women, Black, African American, Afro-Latino, Native and/or Indigenous, Latinx, and LGBTQIA+ individuals.
In the second of his three-part series on the Endowment Model, Deputy CIO Matt Bank examines the incomplete quantitative arguments around endowment performance and offers a more substantive evaluation framework.
As many smaller endowments and foundations opt to outsource their investment management, the Financial Times spoke to GEM's Deputy CIO Matt Bank about how this arrangement can be beneficial to such institutions.
The first of Deputy CIO Matt Bank’s new series, The Long View, reaffirms GEM’s belief that the Endowment Model – in the right hands, for the right institutions – remains a compelling means of achieving risk-adjusted returns.
Let’s start a conversation about how we can help.
1 Returns are not guaranteed. To select impact investments, GEM utilizes the GEM IMP Framework, a comprehensive model adapted from the Impact Management Project’s Impact Management “norms” and Impact Classes and applied by GEM to assess impact by evaluating investment strategies and managers, including but not limited to the impact of portfolio companies on key stakeholders and investment managers’ contributions to impact. For more information on the Impact Management Project, please see https://impactfrontiers.org/norms/. For the avoidance of doubt, GEM reserves the right to modify the GEM IMP Framework and its application.
2 GEM generally considers environmental, social, and governance (“ESG”) factors when evaluating third-party managers. However, GEM may determine to allocate assets to a third-party manager notwithstanding the results of its ESG evaluation for certain portfolios, and GEM is not subject to any firm-wide policies or procedures relating to ESG. Defining and implementing ESG considerations into investment evaluation processes is an inherently subjective exercise, and it is likely that other managers or investors would define and implement ESG considerations differently than GEM.
3 Managers are considered as having a racial or social equity lens if they score a 1 or 2 on GEM’s proprietary equity scales, the details of which can be provided upon request. Managers are considered diverse if (a) 25% or more of the firm founders/owners are non-white and/or non-male and/or (b) 25% or more of the key decision-makers for the strategy in which GEM invests are non-white and/or non-male.
4 Returns are not guaranteed.
5 Opinions expressed herein are based on GEM analysis, assumptions and data interpretations
