Here come the SDG-finance unicorns

The Power of Outcome and Purpose in Impact Investing

Giving Compass' Take: • Stephen Muers, writing for Stanford Social Innovation Review, makes the argument that impact investing has relevance to debates in ethics because investors need to focus on outcome and purpose for this practice, not just financial return. • How can impact investors and organization leaders collaboratively navigate the ethics and values behind investments?  • Read about how ethical behaviors drive social impact.  Two of the longest-standing debates in ethics have direct relevance to impact investing. The first is the debate over the relative value of outcomes and purpose. Is the priority achieving the most good, or is it acting according to a good purpose? Both approaches have a long heritage in Western philosophy, and both also accord with common feelings about morality. Most people would agree, for example, that it would be better to give money to a charity that has clear evidence of its effectiveness than a charity that doesn’t, as the outcome of our giving matters as well as the act itself. But most would also agree that there is something more worthwhile about making someone better off through a conscious donation as opposed to that person finding some money we accidentally lost in the street.