Impact Management System Design
Co-creating with our clients the tools, frameworks, and practices needed to integrate impact into the investment process.
Integrating Impact Considerations
Robust practices of impact management (IM) are a prerequisite for successful impact investing. This means ensuring that impact considerations are purposefully integrated throughout the investment lifecycle, the key steps of which comprise the Operating Principles for Impact Management (OPIM), a standard created in 2019 by an IFC-led consortium of leading impact investors and now includes more than 100 signatories.
Strategic
Intent
Expertly facilitating, introspective process of research and deliberation to ensure that an impact thesis can stand up to market scrutiny.
Origination & Structuring
Designing and developing realistic impact screening and assessment tools that align with existing investment processes.
Portfolio Management
Guiding selection of appropriate impact Key Performance Indicators, reporting protocols and templates to monitor and manage progress.
Impact
at Exit
Preserving and promoting a long-term mission commitment within portfolio companies by building impact considerations into potential exit scenarios.
Independent Verification
Verifying alignment with best practices. In October 2020, Tideline launched BlueMark, a dedicated subsidiary, to provide independent impact verification services.
Strategic Intent
Expertly facilitating, introspective process of research and deliberation to ensure that an impact thesis can stand up to market scrutiny.
Origination & Structuring
Designing and developing realistic impact screening and assessment tools that align with existing investment processes.
Portfolio Management
Guiding selection of appropriate impact Key Performance Indicators, reporting protocols and templates to monitor and manage progress.
Impact at Exit
Preserving and promoting a long-term mission commitment within portfolio companies by building impact considerations into potential exit scenarios.
Independent Verification
Verifying alignment with best practices. In October 2020, Tideline launched BlueMark, a dedicated subsidiary, to provide independent impact verification services.
Tideline is an expert guide for each step, helping clients confidentially navigate the complexities of impact management with an approach that emphasizes collaboration and continuous learning.
Tideline is typically engaged to design and build an impact management system in close collaboration with a client, over 2-3 months. We also offer our “IM Bootcamp,” which in 1-2 weeks helps investors achieve a threshold level of knowledge and good practices enabling exploration and decision-making.
Tideline is the market’s most experienced advisor on impact management systems, with 104 clients and more than 145 assignments. Our approach is anchored in industry standards like the OPIM, Impact Management Project, IRIS+, and SDG Impact. These systems are fully integrated into an investor’s established investment processes and bring to life an investor’s unique strategy and organizational DNA. The IM systems created with Tideline’s advice are featured prominently in marketing collateral and become the centerpiece for client/investor engagement and reports.
IMPACT MANAGEMENT BOOTCAMP
Tideline’s IM Bootcamp is a learning and design sprint, a curriculum to help investors get up to speed on impact investing best practices and begin building the tools and processes needed for robust impact management. Over the course of 1-2 weeks and a series of dynamic workshops, Tideline works closely with clients to transfer and customize a core set of market-aligned and investor-ready presentation materials. Tideline’s IM Bootcamp is the ideal first step for asset managers getting started in impact investing.
CASE STUDY
FRANKLIN TEMPLETON
In 2018, Franklin Templeton was launching the firm’s first impact investing product out of its Franklin Real Asset Advisors (FRAA) business, the Franklin Templeton Social Infrastructure Fund, and sought out Tideline’s expertise to design and build a comprehensive impact management system. Tideline helped refine the Fund’s impact goals and targets, align the Fund with market standards (with a particular focus on the UN Sustainable Development Goals), and build the screening, diligence, assessment, monitoring and reporting tools and processes needed to support robust execution.
The engagement resulted in an impact management strategy that could be seamlessly integrated into each step of FRAA’s existing investment processes and provided compelling content for inclusion marketing materials that immediately resonated with investors. The Social Infrastructure Fund successfully launched in Europe with a focus on investing in healthcare and education facilities, social and affordable housing, and buildings related to justice, emergency and civic services. The Fund has since helped lay the groundwork for a broader impact investing effort at Franklin Templeton.