$27 billion left sustainable funds in a single quarter last year. Is impact investing being defeated, or purified? One of the people in the room when the field got its name says the money that left was never committed, and the most exciting work now is being done by people who don't write press releases about it.
I'm joined by Antony Bugg-Levine, Managing Director of Bugg-Levine, Inc., co-founder of the Global Impact Investing Network, and author of Investing in America: Expanding Access to Finance to Solve Our Shared Challenges. He ran the Nonprofit Finance Fund for a decade, and as a young man he wrote the last speech Nelson Mandela gave as president.
His argument starts with a loan. He grew up in a politically active family in apartheid Johannesburg and got to Yale only because someone lent him the money — and fair access to financing became the throughline of his career. In 2007, after a back-of-the-envelope calculation convinced him there would never be enough money in philanthropy and government to solve the problems he cared about, he convened the meeting on Lake Como where “impact investing” got its name. He doesn’t remember who said it first, and thinks that’s beautiful.
Nineteen years later, he’s asking harder questions of the field he helped build. He started on “Team Unlock More Money for Impact” and now says he’s been, “if you could call it,” radicalized: mainstream capital has had a generation to move further and faster than it has. He also offers a simple gut check for any impact claim — does the methodology ever speak to someone whose life it claims to improve? The share of the market that fails it, he says, whatever it is, is too high.
In this episode we discuss:
- Who left: why the people who dabbled in impact because it was expedient “have found comfort in the ability to retreat without repercussions”
- $27 billion out of sustainable funds in one quarter — a verdict on returns, or, as he suspects, a risk management exercise?
- Who’s quietly building: why the most exciting work is happening inside large family offices that don’t write press releases
- Why, in his words, “returns are objectively measured, risk is not” — and what that does to where capital goes
- The gut check that too much of the impact market fails
- The FTX bankruptcy sale that put Omidyar, Ford Foundation and Nathan Cummings money into Anthropic equity — for influence, not returns
- A $29 million Ford Foundation loan closed in nine days during COVID, and why “you shouldn’t have to have a crisis to work that way”
- Why Congress hasn’t moved to dismantle the CDFI Fund, even as it’s targeted for elimination
- “Are we really planning to win?” — the math that told him grants would never be enough
- How “impact investing” got its name, and why nobody remembers who said it first
- Benjamin Franklin’s 1789 will, and the loan-fund idea underneath all of it
Featured guest:
Antony Bugg-Levine, Managing Director, Bugg-Levine, Inc.; Co-Founder, Global Impact Investing Network; Author, Investing in America
His test for any impact claim: does the methodology ever speak to someone whose life it claims to improve? — https://www.bugglevine.com/
Listen next: Ep 106: Accidental Father of Impact: Nick O'Donohoe on Leading BSC, BII & Building Investability in Emerging Markets
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Key Takeaways:
- The retreat has a profile. The people who dabbled because it was expedient “have found comfort in the ability to retreat without repercussions.” Whether that makes this a purification or a defeat is the question the episode works through.
- Maybe not a verdict on returns. $27 billion left sustainable funds in Q4 2025. He suspects it was “a risk management exercise… rather than a profit maximization one” — while noting he hasn’t spoken to the people who made those decisions.
- Watch the quiet money. By his count, US billionaires went from about 800 to 1,300 in two years. A lot of the most exciting work is being done by people who don’t write press releases about it.
- Risk is a perception. “Returns are objectively measured, risk is not” — which is why capital doesn’t simply follow the numbers.
- The gut check. If an impact methodology can be run without ever speaking to the people it claims to help, that’s a red flag. He doesn’t know the share of the market that fails the test — only that it’s too high.
- From “Team Unlock” to radicalized. Mainstream capital has had a generation to move further and faster than it has, and he’s become less sanguine about how far it will move on its own.
- A governance play, not a return play. Omidyar, Ford and Nathan Cummings bought $5 million of Anthropic equity out of FTX’s bankruptcy, betting on persuasion and influence.
- $29 million in nine days. A deal that normally takes nine months. When Ford’s red line came back, all three proposed changes made the loan easier.
- Grants were never going to be enough. His 2007 math: not enough in philanthropy and government combined, and roughly $100 trillion sitting in global capital markets.
- Franklin’s loan fund. Benjamin Franklin amended his will in 1789 to pay forward the loan that had set him up in business — the same idea, centuries earlier.
About the SRI 360° Podcast:
The SRI 360° Podcast is focused only on sustainable and responsible investing. In each episode, I interview a world-class investor who is an accomplished practitioner from all asset classes. I cover everything from their early personal journeys to how they built and ran their investment strategies, and the challenges they face today. Each episode is a chance to go below the surface with these impressive people and learn useful lessons from professional investors.
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Additional Resources
Antony Bugg-Levine — website: https://www.bugglevine.com/
Antony Bugg-Levine — LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antony-bugg-levine-04058639/
Book — Investing in America: Expanding Access to Finance to Solve Our Shared Challenges: https://investinginamerica.us/
Global Impact Investing Network: https://thegiin.org/
Nonprofit Finance Fund: https://nff.org/
Columbia Business School — Capital for Good podcast featuring Antony: https://business.columbia.edu/socialenterprise/initiatives/capital-good-program/podcast/bugg-levine
Related SRI360° Episodes:
Ep 106: Accidental Father of Impact: Nick O'Donohoe on Leading BSC, BII & Building Investability in Emerging Markets
