The Impact Investing Handbook
An Implementation Guide for Practitioners

“We designed this guide to present you, the impact investor, with the tools to develop and execute a tailored impact investing strategy. We aim to provide an objective, agenda- free resource that will inspire readers while also being realistic about the limitations and possibilities of this increasingly popular investment strategy. We will propose new approaches while keeping the principles of traditional investing in mind.”
— Steven Godeke and Patrick Briaud

How to Use this Guide

We have structured the guide to answer a series of fundamental questions about impact investing. Placed in a sequence, these questions—and each corresponding Practitioner Exercise—become the building blocks of your own impact investing implementation plan.

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Practitioner Exercises

Each chapter presents key field-level concepts, practices, and case studies. At the end of each chapter, we help you apply these concepts to your own context and experience through a series of framing questions and Practitioner Exercises.

We also follow Sophia, a hypothetical impact investor, as she and her family follow these exercises to develop and implement an impact investing strategy. The Practitioner Exercises and Sophia Examples build throughout the handbook using the following framework: (1) What Resources— financial, human, and social—do you have; (2) What Activities do you hope to engage in; and (3) What Impact do you hope to see.