Social impact funding – Giles Gunasekera interview

My name is Giles Gunesekera. I'm the chief executive officer of global impact initiative. The key
issue is really harnessing private capital, and utilizing that private capital that fought for social
good. There's a lot of money out there.

There's a lot of money sitting the superannuation system. There's a lot of money sitting in
family offices, sitting in foundations. That money wants to, and needs to, find a home. And
typically, the more and more so of this money needs to have both the financial return and also
as a positive social outcome. And that's where impact investing comes into the picture.

Yeah, absolutely. The great thing about impact investing is that you are being very intentional
around the financial return, and the social outcome. So when we're setting up these bespoke
strategies, we're saying, this is the social impact that we want to create. This is how we're going
to measure it. This is how we're going to monitor it, and then this is also the financial returns
that we're going to create.

This is how we're going to measure it. This is how we'll monitor it. So when you're putting it
together, the end investor will get-- I got a return of 10%, but I also managed to put 1,000 girls
through primary school. Or, I've provided clean water for 10 villages in Africa.

So there's everything that you do around this space. There's the intentionality around, firstly,
working out what you want to create from the social impact perspective. But most importantly,
measuring it and monitoring it. And that's really-- and then putting that together into a
structure where you've got social returns, and financial returns.

And so consistently, I would find in the business world that there was lots of-- I'm sorry, very
few good ideas, but lots of capital. And in the not-for-profit world, it's the exact opposite. Lots
of great ideas, but not a lot of capital. And so the ability to put those two worlds together, and
more importantly, just get them talking to each other, is really, really important. And this is how
we change the way that we think about investing, and particularly, the way that we think about
impact investing.

Not-for-profits for a long time have been exceptionally good at evaluating, because they've
needed to report to their [INAUDIBLE] internally to their staff, the work that they're doing and
the social impact of that work. With, now, the influx of private capital into that particular
market, they just need to get better. I continue to see not for profits will continue to have a big
role in this space.

They've got the trust. They've got the integrity. They've got the track record, but it's now just
basically lifting their game. And continuing to do more what they're doing, but just doing it at a
high level.