As broadcasted by an earnest feature in the New York Times and a spate of headlines across the worlds of business and philanthropy, impact investing has officially arrived. In early April, the Ford Foundation announced a commitment to the tune of $1 billion (a twelfth of the foundation’s endowment) to mission-driven, socially responsible investments over the next ten years. For longtime watchers, this marks a key moment in the gradual movement of impact investing into the mainstream.

In many ways, the choice is a no-brainer for the foundation. The reasons why underscore how, for philanthropic organizations or investment firms of any size, choosing impact investing is the right move.

It’s as Darren Walker himself — the President of the Ford Foundation — explains: “If philanthropy’s past half century was about optimizing the five percent,” Walker writes, “its next half century will be about beginning to harness the 95 percent as well, carefully and creatively.” All signals point to the practice being not only liberating for philanthropic groups but lucrative, if not imperative, in the coming business landscape.

Turning socially responsible endeavors into ones that also yield returns opens that 95 percent of profit-motivated philanthropic money up to the mission-alignment of the other 5 percent. Impact investing, down to its DNA, is a win-win.

As Ben Paynter reports, “so far, everyone seems happy with the returns” on impact investment. Paynter points to a report by the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) on the state of impact investments worldwide. Therein, 98 percent of impact investors surveyed responded that their returns had met or exceeded their expectations for social impact. Further, and very crucially, a similar amount at 91 percent responded that the financial performance of their impact investments also met or exceeded expectations.

Read the source article at medium.com