Snowy Days, Sunny Returns: IFB Highlights this January

IFB is welcoming (i)Funds for Good, (ii)the Foundation for Future Generations and (iii)Revive as new members of our network!

FUNDS FOR GOOD was created when entrepreneurs decided to utilize their expertise for projects aimed at making a social impact. They opted to establish a business based on a simple yet innovative approach: generating profit to distribute it. Since its inception, the team at FUNDS FOR GOOD has developed its INVEST and IMPACT activities as professionally as possible. FFG IMPACT is active in the financing and empowerment of social entrepreneurs or those in precarious situations. The impact activities are financed by FFG INVEST, creating sustainable funds and returning its own generated profits. The ambition of FUNDS FOR GOOD is to offer a new kind of business model. The FFG website explains: We demonstrate that it’s possible to develop a sustainable and professional economic activity while allocating half of your profits to solving a major social problem. Convinced that the paradigm shift must also emerge from the private sector, as a company, we are doing our part.

The Foundation for Future Generations is a transformative philanthropic platform that helps its donors and partners to support the ability of newer generations to transform society for the better. Through a 360° approach aiming at tackling complex societal issues and building solutions to pass on a livable world, it supports innovators across a range of sectors, including academia and research, societal entrepreneurship, and investments.

Revive is the European leader in sustainable neighbourhood development in which they create urban space for people to live, work and reconnect with nature and each other. They build the future city with a minimal ecological footprint through innovation and energy-efficient technologies. How? By remediating, rebuilding, repurposing, revaluing and reviving vacant and outdated sites and urban infrastructures. Why? To recycle and regenerate land for future generations and create attractive, green, clean, lively andfuture-proof communities.

On Wednesday, 17 January 2024, IFB held its second Members’ Talk, followed by the IFB New Year’s Drink at theImpact House. We invited Luuk Zonnefeld, the CEO of BIO and Wouter Vandersypen, the CEO of Kampani to share their insights on the topic of Moral Dilemmas in (development) Finance.

Main takeaways:

• Clear Strategic Direction: Clear aspiration, intention, decision, and assessment are crucial indictating the direction the investment will take place,
• It is better to be transparent about the scale of the impact rather than overclaiming it,
• Socio-economic development is key as it generates tax income, increases private income, and reduces economic migration,
• There can be a trade-off between impact, return, and risk. Thus, define the conditionalities that can be accepted to create impact.

After the Members’ Talk, we held the New Year’s Drink reception for the participants to celebrate the new year and the future growth of IFB. Despite the snow, we received warm connections, new or current, and much enthusiasm for the evening.

With the wide use and success of the ESG and Impact diagrams, IFB decided to translate them into three languages: English, Dutch and French. You can find both the decision tree and the Venn diagram on the IFB website. To understand more about the ESG & Impact research, join the upcoming Impact Monday on 11 March at the Impact House. We are planning a few webinars around this topic. Stay tuned via the IFB website.

Planning for 2024, IFB first drafted a Strategic Plan for the following three years. This plan was then translated in several concrete topics and actions for 2024. Below are some highlights.

• Building on the publication ESG to Impact, Principles, Standards, Labels and Tools, we will set up specific training sessions and webinars for the IFB members.
• IFB is compiling an inventory of Belgian practices of Green Bonds (and Sustainability Bonds and Impact Bonds) to establish how to use these more for institutional investors. A small group is being formed to link theory to practice as the potential is enormous.
• The broad term of Place Based Impact Investing is high on our agenda. Some of our members are active in Social Housing, which is one aspect. IFB plans to collaborate with Leuven 2030 as a major pilot in this space. The goal of many plans is to explicitly include environmental and/or social targets in the business plans, which may require new forms of financing and collaboration.
• Continuing on the SFDR work, we will follow up on EU Regulation and Belgian Legislation. Different ministries are interested in this topic. This is directly linked to international examples (90/10, dormant accounts or green budgeting) where sibling organizations are also helping us.
• IFB engages with different universities and business schools in Belgium, also with different consultancy firms, who are all exploring new products or new courses of sustainability or impact.
• IFB is spearheading a European collaboration (with similar organizations across the EU) to better collaborate and have one voice towards the European Commission.

Throughout the year, IFB will invite you to different events. We started with Members’ Talks (and plan several more during 2024).

IFB is part of the Impact House (with regular Impact Monday events, see also below) and will collaborate with Impact for Breakfast (at least two sessions during 2024). Both those events are open to everyone interested.

The IFB Annual General Meeting (for members only) will be held on 14 May. In 2024, we will host an IFB Members Impact Day (including some invited partners) on 8 October. The Third Belgian Impact Day (at larger scale) is foreseen to be a bi-annual event, next in Q3 of 2025.

All of these will be posted and updated on the IFB website.

Impact Monday (Open to all interested)

On Monday 11 March, IFB will present at Impact Monday, organized by the Impact House. On this occasion, IFB will present its research publication ‘ESG and Impact’. The research document is available on our website and several members and partners have already used the two diagrams on the report. The aim of this Impact Monday is to unravel the various definitions, frameworks, and classifications surrounding Impact Finance.