Our 2021 Impact Report, "Making Markets Work for People and Planet"

Our 2021 Impact Report

Please find our 2021 Impact Report below, or download here.

A message from our CEO Jennifer Pryce below:

November 2021

When Calvert Impact Capital launched the Community Investment Note® in 1995, the sustainable investment universe in the US was sized at approximately $639 billion. Today, that number has exploded to more than $17 trillion domestically and $35 trillion globally, and is poised to continue its phenomenal growth beyond $50 trillion in 2025.

But despite this record investor demand for sustainable investing, our shared mission to reach the Sustainable Development Goals still seems far out of reach. There is now more than enough money seeking impact, but the challenge we face is to ensure that it will authentically address our most pressing global challenges. And that means we have to expand our focus beyond the quantity of investment dollars raised to the quality of investments made.

What do I mean by quality? Quality investments are made with a holistic approach to impact, meaning that concepts like impact risk (will this investment achieve the impact that it intends to create?) and market impact (does this investment help strengthen the market overall?) are integrated into the analysis and decision-making process. Quality investments manage impact through the life of the investment – from origination to exit, ensuring that impact is a driving concern, not an afterthought. Standards like the Operating Principles for Impact Management are bringing much needed rigor and transparency to impact management and measurement (IMM), enabling the industry to get greater clarity on where our efforts are succeeding and where they are falling short.

Over the past several years we have advanced our own IMM practices, integrating industry best practices across our portfolio, developing a proprietary Impact Rating System that is integrated into our due diligence processes, becoming a founding signatory to the Impact Principles, and more. Our robust IMM practices provide the foundation for this report, providing insight into the incredible work of our portfolio partners who have thrived despite this challenging year – organizations keeping small businesses afloat, providing safe and affordable housing to families, managing our environmental resources sustainably, and reducing carbon dioxide from our atmosphere.

I used to say that success for Calvert Impact Capital would mean going out of business – that ideally, there would be no need for our work when the capital markets adopted our approach to investing and we’d happily hang up our hat. But as I watch our industry move closer and closer to the mainstream, I realize that I was conceiving of our work too narrowly.

There will always be a need for people to push the envelope, to do things differently and better, to refuse to settle for the status quo.

And that will always be Calvert Impact Capital’s role.

In the year to come, we will be focused on creating more opportunities for investors to finance transformative change – to help put the trillions of investment dollars seeking impact in service of genuine solutions. We know how to design financial products that are accessible to investors and impactful for communities. Most importantly we know that we have to think bigger, move faster, and work together to create systemic change and make our markets work for more people, more often. We hope that you’ll join us.

Jennifer Pryce