All investments deliver impact. However, in order for a family office to really drive impact, they need to clearly define it and then propose how they plan on achieving it. This forms the foundation of an impact thesis – a working document that guides the operations and strategy of an impact fund.
Now whilst this may sound simple, the process of co-creating this shared definition of impact (and success) and then using a series of experiments to achieve it, is not. So what methods can you use to de-risk this process by generating alignment amongst wealth owners and managers, and in turn deliver the desired future impact of capital deployed?
This process is a hybrid of methods. Firstly building on a framework used in effective philanthropy called the theory of change, which defines long-term goals and then maps them backward to identify necessary preconditions. To achieve this requires collective agreement on how to define success, both amongst the investors and investment managers. This means it has to be a co-creational process, which is perhaps the toughest part, and benefits from a third party facilitating or driving the process to keep things on track.
