Scaling Up

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Invest for Better is scaling up! Earlier this year, as we reckoned with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our 2020 goals for Invest for Better, we presumed that this new reality would require us to temper our expectations and wait for the “next normal”. We worked to adapt our model for a virtual experience, and help existing Invest for Better Circles continue their important work.

However, when we put out a call for new leaders to join an inaugural cohort of Circles, we were stunned by the response – more than 60 volunteers stepped up to lead 40 Invest for Better Circles that will launch this month as part of our inaugural cohort! Circle leaders come from a variety of backgrounds and include individual investors, investment advisors, foundation trustees, academics, and activists. They range in age from their 20’s to their 60’s. They live primarily throughout the United States and Canada, but we also have a Circle in South Africa and one in the Caribbean. Fourteen Circles are led by one or more women of color, and while all Circles will launch in a virtual format, nearly half will focus on recruiting members in their local region. We are launching these new Circles as part of an inaugural cohort in order to:

  • Help build community and accountability among the leaders through regular Zoom calls and an online Circle Leader Hub
  • Gather valuable input on the Invest for Better model to help strengthen it and to build the resource library of materials for Circle leaders
  • Enable us to evaluate the success of the model over a significant sample size

The enthusiasm of the new Circle leaders is inspiring! We held two Zoom calls over the summer to help new leaders prepare to launch their Circles and had more than 50 aspiring leaders on each call. It was amazing to see all their faces in the gallery and to get their insightful input through dialog and surveys. All 60 leaders have joined the online Circle Leader Hub and many of them are nominating amazing people for the Invest for Better Circle Speakers Bureau. We expect to reach about 400 women investors through this inaugural cohort and envision this as a model for future cohorts. We all have the sense that we are on the crest of a wave that will bring more women into the impact investing movement and shape the future of our global capital markets.

We are currently in a fundraising mode to help us as we scale. If you would like to support our movement, please consider making a donation. And if you would like to be part of future Circle leader cohorts, please let us know. We are incredibly grateful for your continued support of our movement to help grow and shape the future of impact investing through greater female participation.