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Giving Compass' Take:
• Some countries are using National Advisory Boards (NABs) to promote impact investing through collaborative, cross-sector work. Initiative for Responsible Investment unpacks practices of effective NABs.
• How can philanthropy support expansion and improvement of NABs? Are there risks and possible consequences associated with this form of impact investing promotion?
• Consider pay for success as a vehicle for systems change.
In 17 countries and the European Union, National Advisory Boards (NABs) have become the go-to resource for promoting impact investment. By bringing together governments, investors, asset managers, intermediaries, NGOs, and market builders such as professional firms, NABs are powerful change agents for developing impact economies that benefit people and planet. They have demonstrated their potential to unlock new sources of impact capital and develop national impact infrastructure and policies.
Lessons from effective NABs:
- The membership, staffing and governance of NABs should be tailored to their purpose. There is no single model for a multi-sector organization dedicated to field-building, because field-building must respond to specific cultural and political contexts.
- NAB memberships balance active participants in the field with new recruits from whom the field could benefit.
- The Secretariats drive the work of the NABs, and their ability to function depends on member engagement. Sustainable funding for Secretariats has proved and will likely continue to prove challenging.
- The Secretariats, in particular their most active staff members on the NABs, derive a great deal of benefit from engaging with their peers via the GSG framework. Mechanisms to promote cross-Secretariat engagement, especially in person, are important.
- NABs can play important roles in bringing legitimacy and promoting the field of impact investing in their respective countries/regions, but they need work plans and specified strategic goals to be most effective.
- A distinguishing feature of NABs is their development of public policy recommendations and engagement with the public sector.
- Finally, the NABs and the GSG globally are seen by practitioners as potential vehicles through which to navigate the rapidly changing landscape of impact investment, and to hold existing practitioners and new entrants accountable to achieving targeted social goals.
Practitioners are still exploring the roles of NABs and the GSG going forward. In theory, the NABs’ goals are to build a field with a coordinated, compelling narrative, clear steps for a range of practitioners to take to build that field, and at the outer reaches, an ambitious agenda to reshape the relationship of finance to society. In practice, NABs need clear institutional roles, support for their activity, and specific goals and the means to organize stakeholders around them.