This month the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) featured a chat with Bonny Moellenbrock, Executive Director of Investors’ Circle. Durham-based Investors’ Circle is the largest and most active early-stage impact investing network in the world. To date the network has connected over 300 social enterprises with nearly $200 million in capital.
In the CASE Chat, Bonny discusses the need for tri-sector leadership in impact investing and how to talk with different investors, exciting trends in the field, and the role of Investors’ Circle in the impact investing ecosystem.
On what’s driving advances in impact investing…
“The next generation of millennials is driving a lot of this because they are insisting that their careers will have meaning as well as a financial benefit. And they don’t see this bifurcation between doing good and doing well.”
On the need for tri-sector leadership…
“You need to understand the motivations and needs of different sectors, of the policy in the government world as well as the nonprofit world, where you have people addressing these challenges, so that you can bring the best of all those skills into these solutions.”
On being successful in impact investing…
“Relationships are critical, and so for us, we consider the community aspect of what we’re doing– investors learning how to do this with other investors, engaging their expertise as well as their own, to assess these opportunities and support these entrepreneurs is a critical piece to doing successful early-stage investing.”
Want to hear more from Bonny? Watch the full CASE Chat:
About Bonny Moellenbrock:
Bonny is the Executive Director of both Investors’ Circle and SJF Institute and brings extensive entrepreneurial, venture capital, sustainable business, and nonprofit management experience to her role. Previously, Bonny was a Managing Director at SJF Ventures, a leading impact venture fund investing in high-growth, positive impact companies in the cleantech, sustainability, and technology-enhanced services sectors. Before joining SFJ in 2000, she served as COO and CFO of Preservation North Carolina, a nonprofit that promotes historic preservation and protects properties through its award-winning endangered properties acquisition and redevelopment program. Learn more.
About Investors’ Circle:
Originally incorporated in Chicago in 1992, Investors’ Circle was founded by a group of successful social entrepreneurs who shared a desire to increase the flow of capital to the next generation of mission-driven companies. By the late 1990s, this pioneering organization was a key impact investing convener, producing semi-annual conferences to showcase impact investing opportunities as well as share thought leadership and best practices. IC worked with other leading organizations, including the Ford Foundation, F.B. Heron Foundation, Kellogg Foundation, and Rockefeller Foundation, to build the mission- and program-related investing knowledge base. Learn more.