In developing your plan for giving and/or impact investing, the inevitable questions come up of if and where to focus geographically.

Assuming you don’t have endless cash to deploy for solving our seemingly endless list of global problems, you need to make some tough choices about where to put your money. Should you direct your capital to where it can do the most good, or to areas that you best understand, or should you make allocation decisions based on some other criteria?

Here, I offer some considerations in thinking through what makes the most sense for you and your capital deployment.

  • Local investing While some argue that local investing and impact investing are synonymous, this is overly-simplistic and assumes that all locally-controlled businesses have a net positive effect on our communities (which they don’t). The Pittsburgh Innovation District and subsequent tech boom are often celebrated as “exemplary of a new growth model.” (Katz, B. & Nowak, J., 2017. The new localism: How cities can thrive in the age of populism. Brookings Institution Press. Page 71.)
  • Global investing Despite its benefits, focusing locally is inherently limiting. For all the reasons above, it’s tempting to focus locally because you can see the impact. But our local economies are inextricably linked with national and global economies — as well as their social and environmental impacts (both positive and negative).

Read the full article about local and global impact investing from ImpactPHL Perspectives at Generocity.