As the world now has 7 billion people, what innovative approaches to housing, land and forestry are available to investors?

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How do impact investors spur long-term innovation? Through garage startups, which can also be sexy.

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TriplePundit’s Nick Aster sits down with with Matt Bannick, Managing Partner for Omidyar Network to look for some perspective.

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4 Fixed Income Investments to seek the potential for income & impact: Fixed-income mutual funds, Pooled loan funds, Microfinance funds, and Peer-to-peer loans.

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Morgan Stanley makes its first foray into impact investing.

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A HIP investor investigates their bank or credit union: how it functions, where customer funds are loaned or invested, how it can benefit your community.

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A HIP investor can find human impact and profit potential in every type of investment. Formally, these are called asset classes, and you want a diverse mix of them in your portfolio. Each investment category or “class” has a different risk and return profile.

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At HIP Investor, we make investing choices based on a full and comprehensive picture of all risks and opportunities, in the short- and long-term.

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What is your company’s most important asset? Most of you will say “people.” Many CEOs say this as well. However, where are people on the financial statements?

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HIP’s Approach to Sustainability brings potential for increased cash from customer sales & reduced monetary outflows for the costs of materials, people & taxes.

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What’s the story with interest rates imposed on the poor in developing countries?

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Solving human needs – Health, Wealth, Earth, Equality and Trust – can be profitable. This feature delves into metrics of physical & mental health that can be leading indicators of financial performance.

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5 types of metrics – Health, Wealth, Earth, Equality, & Trust – are frequently ignored in financial reports & by traditional stock analysts. These metrics are seen as “soft” when they actually relate to “hard” value.

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These 4 global trends are growing in scale and depth. Forward-looking investors are evaluating these trends for portfolio decisions, and seeking out sustainability-oriented companies that are tapping growth, managing risks, reducing costs, delivering “good” impacts and communicating openly with stakeholders.

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A couple of weeks ago I wrote about why I want to become an impact investor and why I chose MicroPlace as my broker. Since then, I’ve been perusing investment options on MicroPlace to figure out where in the world my money is most badly needed—a pretty daunting task, considering that every single investment offered on the platform is worthy.

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Now, there is a new investment approach—one that seeks bigger profits that capitalists pursue while building a better world that do-gooders desire. The goal is to generate human impact and profit, or “HIP,” simultaneously. HIP embraces a comprehensive view of society. HIP encourages for-profit companies to solve human problems, generating new customers, fulfilling employees, and serving society.

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I’m not loaded, by any stretch of the imagination, but I do have enough savings to do something useful with, so I’ve decided that 2012 is going to be THE year I finally get hip to investing my hard-earned cash. And I am particularly motivated this year because impact investing—which focuses not only on financial returns but on social and environmental ones as well—has seriously piqued my interest and provided the inspiration to invest that I’ve been missing. Follow me on my journey through my blog series: My Two Cents on Impact Investing.

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Impact investment is at a crisis point: Clean up now or lose credibility. How can they meet the challenge?

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Impact investing is filling a void in the sustainable economy, giving green startups access to capital that has long been the challenge to many sustainable enterprises.

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Local, sustainable food has become a regular part of our everyday culture as demonstrated through the growing popularity of school gardens, Community Supported Agriculture, local farmers’ markets, underground dining clubs, and organics in general. This enduring trend in sustainable food reignites a question posed on Triple Pundit two years ago: “Is Sustainable Farming Going Mainstream?” Unfortunately not at all as the sustainable food hype trumps the numbers.

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From 1977 to 1986, student activism on campuses across the United States drove anti-apartheid divestment that eventually pressured the South African government to begin negotiations that led to the end of the apartheid system. With the power to effect change of this magnitude, imagine what else can be accomplished by an impact investment approach to endowment fund management. A new program of the Sustainable Endowments Institute, in partnership with 16 other organizations including AASHE, The Clinton Climate Initiative and Net Impact, is helping academic institutions and other non-profits to do just that.

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R. Paul Herman, founder and CEO of HIP Investor, discusses the difference between impact investing and socially responsible investing, how HIP evaluates firms, and how you can shape your investment strategy to create a positive impact.

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Impact investing has the potential to change the world. By driving more money and investments into green businesses, the field stands to facilitate the needed transition in the global economy to a more sustainable, regenerative one. Recently, I attended a talk by Murray Clay, of the Ulupono Initiative. Ulupono has been billed as the only [...]

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SOCAP 2011 explored the intersection of money and meaning. What role does spirituality play in ‘meaning?’ And how does it manifest itself in business? One panel at SOCAP specifically explored spirituality as a manifestation of meaning in business.  The panel was titled Spirituality & Social Enterprise: What’s Your Motivation? In this interview, the panel moderator [...]

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It could be argued that Hawai’i’s three main sustainability challenges are energy (90% diesel-powered), food (90% imported, mostly processed), and waste (limited landfill space). The Ulupono Initiative is a social investment organization, focused exclusively on addressing these three main challenges in Hawaii. Impact investing, as this phenomenon is called, is another option for funding green [...]

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As SOCAP 2011 – a conference focused on “accelerating the flow of capital to social good” – drew to a close last Friday in San Francisco, there was a prevailing sense of optimism and opportunity. Here are 7 hot topics people were discussing in the halls and along the breezy Bay side Fort Mason conference [...]

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You may have not noticed , but the 2011 proxy season is practically over. In the past, most companies would not notice either since shareholder resolutions, especially environmental and social ones haven’t historically gained much support among voting shareholders. But in the last couple of years this trend has radically changed and support levels are [...]

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The almighty dollar. Acquiring it is the most commonly cited challenge for entrepreneurs: how to raise sufficient capital to grow, expand, hire, or simply survive. The growing fields of impact investing and socially responsible investing also make it clear that the investment environment is ripe for locally-sourced capital infusions in mission-driven businesses….if only the dollars [...]

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The following open letter is a part of the Presidio Graduate School’s Capital Markets course. For one of the course assignments, students write a letter to an oversight body, government entity or other appropriate institution. The topic: changing the sector of capital markets that relates to their chosen topic so it reinforces principles of sustainability. [...]

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Yesterday, the California Senate Committee on Banking and Financial Institutions met to review SB201- a bill that would create a new form of corporation for social benefit known as the “Flexible Purpose Corporation.” To better understand the legislation, we chatted with one of its co-drafters: Will Fitzpatrick, General Counsel of the Omidyar Network.   TriplePundit: [...]

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