S&P Global leads BlueMark’s $10 million raise for impact verification … – ImpactAlpha

Native-led Navajo Power leans into the just transition with community benefits and local jobs. Rapid development of clean energy capacity and a just transition are needed to confront the increasingly urgent climate crisis. Navajo Power is out to prove that it’s possible to profitably decarbonize the economy and strengthen and build wealth in Indigenous communities. In five years, the solar developer has established a three-gigawatt pipeline of solar-plus-storage projects in tribal communities across the United States, including a 750-megawatt facility near a now defunct 2.3-gigawatt coal-fired power plant on Navajo Nation. When the company’s projects come online, local communities will get a cut of the profits to use as they see fit. “It’s a way for us to reinvest in communities beyond traditional land leases and taxes,” Navajo Power’s Brett Isaac tells ImpactAlpha, adding, “We’re able to utilize the benefit of working with communities to build our company.” 
BII anchors SDG Outcomes Fund with $10 million for development impact bonds. The fund is seeking $100 million to seed approximately 15 to 20 “development impact bonds” that target positive health, education, employment and environmental outcomes in West Africa and South Asia. British International Investment’s commitment marks its first investment in development impact bonds, contracts that are repaid when social and environmental outcomes are achieved. The UK’s development finance institution joins the Development Finance Corp. as an anchor investor in the fund. Other investors include Dubai-based Legatum, the Tsao Family Office and high-net-worth individuals. UBS Optimus Foundation and Bridges Outcomes Partnerships, a nonprofit subsidiary of Bridges Fund Management, launched the fund “to improve lives at scale and, over time, to transform the way in which development projects are designed and delivered,” said Bridges’ Mila Lukic. 
🍻 Brewing employee ownership. The unionized workers of Anchor Brewing, the historic San Francisco brewery that announced it will shutter, have launched an effort to purchase the brewery and run it as a worker co-op. (Vinepair)
Sherry Madera, senior vice president of public policy at Mastercard, will step into a new role as CEO of CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project)… Eric Nee is retiring in January after 17 years as editor of the Stanford Social Innovation Review. The magazine is on the hunt for a replacement… Skoll Foundation seeks a program manager in Palo Alto.
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David Bank chats with FarMart’s Samridhi Singh in the next conversation in our series from the recent Salzburg Global Seminar on “Connecting Capital …
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Jeff Skoll first became well-known as the president (and first full-time employee) of a nascent Internet marketplace known as eBay.  Then he built …
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Concerns about accusations of ‘impact washing’ is driving demand for third-party assessments of impact practices and reporting. 
New York-based BlueMark raised $10 million to expand its verification business, including from three Singapore-based investors that are encouraging the firm to expand its activities in Asia. 
“We want all investments to be accountable for impact and BlueMark to be the mark of impact, integrity and quality,” BlueMark’s Christina Leijonhufvud told ImpactAlpha. “We are helping make life easier for capital allocators to sort between the wheat and the chaff. We’re a real antidote to the trend of impact washing and greenwashing.”
S&P Global’s venture unit led the Series A financing, with participation from Temasek Trust Capital, the Singapore sovereign wealth fund’s philanthropic arm, and Blue Haven Initiative, Gunung Capital, and Tsao Family Office. Ford Foundation and Radicle Impact, which invested in BlueMark’s $2.25 million seed round last year, also committed new capital.
Since 2020, BlueMark has completed 125 verifications for investors with more than $200 billion in combined assets under management. Much of its practice has centered around the the Operating Principles for Impact Management (see, “‘Operating principles’ help investors hold asset managers accountable for impact”). Increasingly, the firm has also assessed investment firms against Europe’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation, or SFDR, and other frameworks. The firms also verifies firms’ impact reporting as well as the criteria for sustainability-linked loans and bonds. 
Some asset allocators are adding impact verification to their due diligence questionnaires. Leijonhufvud said British International Investment retains BlueMark to assess prospective fund managers as part of its standard process. 
BlueMark has shared its research on impact management practices, benchmarks, and impact reporting, including in sponsored posts on ImpactAlpha.
“We do have clients who are committed to learning and improving and the fact that we approach the service in a way that provides the client with insights as to how they can improve and fill their gaps and so on is appealing to them,” Leijonhufvud said.
“Probably the majority of clients are first and foremost motivated by fear of being accused of impact-washing,” she added. “I do think, certainly, that CYA is a motivator.”
Choose beats that you’re interested in, and we’ll show you more of them as you explore…
Native-led Navajo Power leans into the just transition with community benefits and local jobs. Rapid development of clean energy capacity and a just transition are needed to confront the increasingly urgent climate crisis. Navajo Power is out to prove that it’s possible to profitably decarbonize the economy and strengthen and build wealth in Indigenous communities. In five years, the solar developer has established a three-gigawatt pipeline of solar-plus-storage projects in tribal communities across the United States, including a 750-megawatt facility near a now defunct 2.3-gigawatt coal-fired power plant on Navajo Nation. When the company’s projects come online, local communities will get a cut of the profits to use as they see fit. “It’s a way for us to reinvest in communities beyond traditional land leases and taxes,” Navajo Power’s Brett Isaac tells ImpactAlpha, adding, “We’re able to utilize the benefit of working with communities to build our company.” 
BII anchors SDG Outcomes Fund with $10 million for development impact bonds. The fund is seeking $100 million to seed approximately 15 to 20 “development impact bonds” that target positive health, education, employment and environmental outcomes in West Africa and South Asia. British International Investment’s commitment marks its first investment in development impact bonds, contracts that are repaid when social and environmental outcomes are achieved. The UK’s development finance institution joins the Development Finance Corp. as an anchor investor in the fund. Other investors include Dubai-based Legatum, the Tsao Family Office and high-net-worth individuals. UBS Optimus Foundation and Bridges Outcomes Partnerships, a nonprofit subsidiary of Bridges Fund Management, launched the fund “to improve lives at scale and, over time, to transform the way in which development projects are designed and delivered,” said Bridges’ Mila Lukic. 
🍻 Brewing employee ownership. The unionized workers of Anchor Brewing, the historic San Francisco brewery that announced it will shutter, have launched an effort to purchase the brewery and run it as a worker co-op. (Vinepair)
Sherry Madera, senior vice president of public policy at Mastercard, will step into a new role as CEO of CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project)… Eric Nee is retiring in January after 17 years as editor of the Stanford Social Innovation Review. The magazine is on the hunt for a replacement… Skoll Foundation seeks a program manager in Palo Alto.
David Bank chats with Acre Africa’s Niza Banda in the next conversation from the recent “Connecting capital to communities” gathering at the Salzburg …
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