Making the Mark

Benchmarking Impact Management Practice

Thank you for downloading the report.

Enter your email to access BlueMark's fourth annual "Making the Mark" report.

    Taking a deeper dive

    In this fourth annual Making the Mark report, the BlueMark team takes a deeper dive into those impact management practices that are most (or least) common among different segments of the impact and sustainable investing market.

    With our largest sample size to date, we are able to cut and slice our data to generate tailored benchmarks and insights to help improve investor decision-making and optimize capital allocation towards impact.

    “The expanded dataset in this year’s Making the Mark report reveals an increasingly diverse range of impact investors across asset classes and strategies, reflecting growing adoption of impact management standards across investor types.”
    — Christina Leijonhufvud, CEO of BlueMark

    Making the Mark 2023

    84
    verifications
    FOR INVESTORs
    managing
    a combined
    $ 209 B
    IMPACT AUM

    How do you compare to your peers?

    The BlueMark Practice Benchmark categorizes practice ratings by quartile, providing a mechanism for investors to compare themselves to the current state of practice in the market.

    BlueMark Practice Benchmark

    Check out this year’s Practice Benchmark and see how your firm stacks up against the rest of the impact investing industry.

    LEARNING
    PRACTICE

    (25th percentile and below)

    MEDIAN

    (50th percentile)

    LEADING
    PRACTICE

    (75th percentile and above)

    Principles Principle 1 Impact objectives Principle 2 Impact management Principle 3 Investor contribution Principle 4 Impact screening Principle 5 ESG risk management Principle 6 Impact monitoring Principle 7 Impact at exit Principle 8 Impact review
    LOW
    moderate
    high
    advanced

    Leaderboard of investors

    The BlueMark Practice Leaderboard was created as a way to highlight those impact investors with best-in-class impact management practices. To earn a spot on the Leaderboard, verified investors must receive top quartile ratings across each of the Impact Principles in the Benchmark for that year.

    Only impact investors that have been verified within the previous two years will be eligible for each year’s Leaderboard to ensure that investors are continuously reassessed against the current state of the market.

    AgDevCo
    VERIFIED June 2021 ASSET CLASS Private Equity, Private Debt IMPACT THEMES
    • Sustainable Agriculture

    Verification statement (TBA)

    Bain Capital Double Impact
    VERIFIED April 2023 ASSET CLASS Private Equity IMPACT THEMES
    • Health & Wellness
    • Education & Workforce Development
    • Sustainability
    Blue Earth Capital
    VERIFIED Feb. 2023 ASSET CLASS Private Equity, Private Debt, Funds IMPACT THEMES
    • Multi-theme
    British International Investment
    VERIFIED June 2022 ASSET CLASS Private Equity, Private Debt, Funds IMPACT THEMES
    • Productive, Sustainable and Inclusive
    Calvert Impact Capital
    VERIFIED April 2023 ASSET CLASS Private Debt IMPACT THEMES
    • Access to Community Service
    • Financial Inclusion
    • Climate Change
    Finance in Motion
    VERIFIED Nov. 2021 ASSET CLASS Private and Public Debt, Private Equity IMPACT THEMES
    • Green Economy
    • Climate Finance
    • Entrepreneurship & Livelihoods
    • Financial Inclusion
    LeapFrog Investments
    VERIFIED Jan. 2023 ASSET CLASS Private Equity IMPACT THEMES
    • Financial Inclusion
    • Healthcare
    • Climate Solutions
    Nuveen (Private Equity Impact)
    VERIFIED June 2022 ASSET CLASS Private Equity IMPACT THEMES
    • Resource Efficiency
    • Inclusive Growth
    Nuveen (Fixed Income Impact)
    VERIFIED June 2022 ASSET CLASS Public Debt IMPACT THEMES
    • Affordable Housing
    • Community & Economic Development
    • Renewable Energy & Climate Change
    • Natural Resources
    Trill Impact
    VERIFIED Jan. 2022 ASSET CLASS Private Equity, Private Debt IMPACT THEMES
    • Multi-theme (SDG-aligned impact)

    The size of our sample

    This year’s “Making the Mark” report is based on 84 verifications for 75 impact investors managing a combined $209.4 billion in impact-oriented assets under management.

    Investor Type (N=84)

    How investors identify themselves

    38 27 12 7
    • Asset Managers (Diversified)
    • Asset Managers (Impact-only)
    • Development Finance Institutions (DFI)
    • Other (e.g., Family Office, Foundation, Wealth Manager)

    Asset Class (N=166)

    Which asset classes investors are prioritizing

    • Private Equity (Growth)
    • Private Debt
    • Private Equity (Venture Capital)
    • Private Equity (Buyout)
    • Real Assets
    • Other
    • Public Debt
    • Public Equity
    54
    31
    25
    22
    14
    10
    6
    4
    54
    31
    25
    22
    14
    10
    6
    4

    Geography (N=202)

    Where investors are deploying their capital

    Client spotlights

    Learn more about best practices through these case studies on innovations in impact management featuring impact investors recently verified by BlueMark.

    Franklin Templeton

    Driving impact in real assets

    Schroders Asset Management

    Investing for impact in public equities

    Summa Equity

    Linking impact management to quality impact reporting

    FullCycle Climate Partners

    Managing for climate mitigation impacts

    Key findings

    See which impact management practices are most common among investors, and which practices still present a challenge for the field.

    31 %
    impact-linked incentives

    The adoption of staff-incentive systems linked to impact remains limited, with only 31% of BlueMark-verified impact management systems explicitly integrating impact considerations into staff incentives. The most common approach at 25% is through annual staff performance reviews related to impact, including a subset of 15% that make the link explicit through variable pay and bonus structures, however, only 7% of the market has linked their impact performance to carried interest.

    55 %
    assessment of impact risks

    55% of investors include an analysis of impact risk in due diligence, however investors tend to focus their assessments on the likelihood of impact occurring (“execution risk”) rather than assessing potential negative impacts (“unexpected impact risk”). In fact, only 24% of investors include a standardized assessment of negative impacts as part of their process, which suggests the market has more work to do when accounting for potential negative externalities in due diligence.

    32 %
    stakeholder engagement

    Less than a third of investors (32%) are engaging with target stakeholders and actively soliciting their input to validate outcomes alongside investee data. While still a minority practice, a slight increase compared to last year’s research sample shows that soliciting input from end-stakeholders experiencing the impact outcomes will become a key part of effective impact management and monitoring.

    27 %
    impact at exit

    27% of investors are taking consistent actions to ensure sustainable impact creation, while just more than half of investors (60%) have a policy or approach in place to consider the sustainability of impact at and beyond exit. This suggests there is a long way to go before impact considerations take equal precedence to financial considerations and investors proactively identify actions to preserve impact as part of exit strategies. Given exit practices range broadly across asset class contexts, additional norms and consensus best practice across investment strategies will be required for this market practice to continue to improve.

    Making the Mark 2023 report

    See more data and insights about impact investing best practices, trends, and challenges in the full report.

    Thank you for downloading the report.

    Enter your email to receive the report into your inbox

      Data snapshots

      To help spotlight differences between different segments of the market, we’ve created several custom data snapshots to allow users to interact directly with the data. The snapshots show what percentage of investors are executing a specific impact practice, based on the sample size of investors verified by BlueMark to date.

      • Are asset allocators more likely than asset managers to align staff incentive systems with impact performance?
      • Are managers of social-focused strategies more likely to solicit input from stakeholders than climate-focused strategies?
      • Are private markets strategies more likely to have an approach to sustaining impact at exit than public markets strategies?
      • Investor Type
      • Asset Class
      • Impact Theme
      Variation from Median based on +/- 10%
      • > +10%
      • < -10%
      Variation from Median based on +/- 10%
      • > +10%
      • < -10%
      Investment stage IMPACT PRACTICE Median
      N=84
      Impact-Only
      Managers
      n=38
      Conventional
      Managers
      n=27
      DFIs
      n=12
      Private Equity
      n=65
      Private Debt
      n=31
      Real Assets
      n=14
      Social
      n=36
      Climate / Environmental
      n=44
      Multi theme / Theme Agnostic
      n=13
      Strategic Intent Create a fund-level theory of change with supporting evidence 60% 58% 52% 67% 57% 65% 71% 61% 55% 62%
      Align staff incentive systems with impact performance 31% 34% 15% 58% 31% 39% 14% 31% 32% 23%
      Impact Due Diligence Use a composite impact scoring or rating tool to assess impact across the portfolio 29% 34% 19% 42% 29% 29% 43% 31% 30% 39%
      Assess all fundamental components of potential impact for each investment 49% 47% 52% 33% 43% 52% 43% 50% 43% 69%
      Impact Monitoring and Measurement Actively manage and engage on ESG risks with investees 52% 45% 56% 75% 51% 71% 50% 56% 61% 69%
      Consistently monitor impact data against expectations or a target 60% 61% 63% 50% 58% 68% 64% 69% 61% 39%
      Track and monitor results of investor contribution activities 23% 21% 19% 33% 20% 23% 29% 22% 20% 31%
      Solicit data from end-stakeholders to validate outcomes 32% 34% 33% 25% 29% 26% 29% 31% 27% 46%
      Impact at Exit Have an approach to sustaining impact at exit 60% 66% 52% 50% 52% 55% 64% 58% 50% 62%
      Use impact review findings to improve processes 39% 37% 41% 42% 39% 39% 50% 47% 36% 54%
      Investment stage Strategic Intent Impact Due Diligence Impact Monitoring and Measurement Impact at Exit
      IMPACT PRACTICE Create a fund-level theory of change with supporting evidence Align staff incentive systems with impact performance Use a composite impact scoring or rating tool to assess impact across the portfolio Assess all fundamental components of potential impact for each investment Actively manage and engage on ESG risks with investees Consistently monitor impact data against expectations or a target Track and monitor results of investor contribution activities Solicit data from end-stakeholders to validate outcomes Have an approach to sustaining impact at exit Use impact review findings to improve processes
      Median
      N=84
      60% 31% 29% 49% 52% 60% 23% 32% 60% 39%
      Impact-Only
      Managers
      n=38
      58% 34% 34% 47% 45% 61% 21% 34% 66% 37%
      Conventional
      Managers
      n=27
      52% 15% 19% 52% 56% 63% 19% 33% 52% 41%
      DFIs
      n=12
      67% 58% 42% 33% 75% 50% 33% 25% 50% 42%
      Private Equity
      n=65
      57% 31% 29% 43% 51% 58% 20% 29% 52% 39%
      Private Debt
      n=31
      65% 39% 29% 52% 71% 68% 23% 26% 55% 39%
      Real Assets
      n=14
      71% 14% 43% 43% 50% 64% 29% 29% 64% 50%
      Social
      n=36
      61% 31% 31% 50% 56% 69% 22% 31% 58% 47%
      Climate / Environmental
      n=44
      55% 32% 30% 43% 61% 61% 20% 27% 50% 36%
      Multi theme / Theme Agnostic
      n=13
      62% 23% 39% 69% 69% 39% 31% 46% 62% 54%