Welcome to the Equality Impact Investing Toolkit
Are you an investor interested in generating positive equality impact? Are you exploring how you can strategically deploy your funds to address structural inequalities? Are you thinking about how to start, or how to ensure you are on the right track toward equality impact investing?
The Equality Impact Investing Toolkit has been designed to support investors working across the spectrum of capital who are committed to reducing inequalities through their investments. It offers an introduction to equality impact investing, guiding you through all the key steps you should follow to develop an impact thesis and investment processes to tackle inequality. You can also find a number of practical tools and case examples from around the world to help you in this journey.
Because equality impact investing is a new and emerging area within impact investing, the approaches and cases provided here represent practice as it’s currently developing. It animates the EIIP’s foundational report, Equality Impact Investing: From Principles to Practice. This toolkit will be updated on a regular basis to reflect the latest in EII thinking and practice. You can also find a collection of resources on the EII Knowledge Hub.
Is this toolkit for me?
This toolkit is primarily for impact investors who want to further their equality impact: whether by altering existing investment plans and practice or creating new dedicated products. Because equality impact investing can be applied across the whole spectrum of capital, this toolkit is relevant for a range of investors – from mainstream asset managers to impact-first investors to grantmakers.
This toolkit may also be of interest to social ventures, including equality and human rights organisations, who want to raise funds from equality impact investors and/or to measure and showcase your equality impact to potential funders.
How to use this toolkit?
The toolkit is structured into five sections, starting with an overview of equality impact investing (EII) and then looking at its key steps:
+ STEP 1 Understand EII - Definition, key premises and principles
- What is equality impact investing?
- What do we mean by tackling inequality and advancing human rights?
- Key EII premises and principles
- What is EII trying to achieve and how?
- Why become an equality impact investor?
- EII actors and their roles
- Glossary
+ STEP 2 Set EII goals
- Identify equality challenges
- Equality impact goal setting: what can you change?
- Case example: a place-based fund in Birmingham, UK
+ STEP 3 Use EII strategies
- What are EII strategies
- How to choose EII strategies
- Assess the market
+ STEP 4 Integrate EII across investment process
- Planning - Power Analysis
- Investment thesis (fund level)
- Investment thesis (product level)
- Sourcing investment
- Screening and due diligence
- Investment decision-making
- Deal-making and deal terms
- Monitoring and evaluation
- Exit
+ STEP 5 Review, learn and contribute to EII
- Contribute to the development of EII
- Tell us about your experience with the toolkit
Each of these steps are closely interrelated. EII doesn’t always follow a linear or sequential process; it usually entails constantly revisiting your steps to ensure, for example, if they reflect EII premises and principles or the current market. We suggest that you consider how each of these steps fit into and support each other.
Each section of the toolkit provides a wide range of resources, including relevant concepts, tools, case examples and additional reading.
FROM THEORY TO ACTION…
Hear about some of the questions that building this toolkit brought up
Listen to EIIP Associate Director Ceri Goddard and The Social Investment Consultancy's Bonnie Chiu discuss some of the key questions that arose producing this the Toolkit - an insight into the work of bringing together the fields of equality and human rights and impact investing as we build a the new one of equality impact investing.
Bonnie Chiu, The Social Investment Consultancy and Ceri Goddard, Equality Impact Investment Project
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