Mission Markets Musings: Jeff Tuller

I wear two hats here at Mission Markets: Chief Technology Officer and Director of Social Metrics, and right now is a pretty good time for both.

Technology first. Let's take a quick look at how the current state of technology helps Mission Markets fulfill its mission: to grow the impact investing space.



For starters, we have the internet.  We take for granted these days the ability to set up a storefront in cyberspace, but the internet has matured way beyond that:



• Virtual communications: email was the internet's original killer app because it filled one basic need: to communicate.  Email still comes in handy, but real-time tools like Skype, LiveMeeting and Webex offer virtual conferencing capabilities that seem indispensable now.  Our Virtual Road Shows are just the latest example of this technology in action.



• The Social Web: "Social" websites allow us to spread the Mission Markets gospel through channels such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter - on top of our own blog and newsletter.



• Mega-Networking: The viral growth inherent in the network model is multiplied when your network includes networks.  Our own social network grows steadily with each new Mission Markets fan, but it takes one giant leap each time we partner with organizations with networks of their own.  For example, there are our friends at Slow Money and Social Venture Network.  We love each other not only for the alignment of our missions, but for the cross-pollination potential of our networks.



I can't say technology makes building an impact investing marketplace easy, but it sure makes it easier. Next post, I'll talk about how recent developments in performance metrics makes social and environmental impact easier to capture and compare.

- Jeff Tuller, Mission Markets Chief Technology Officer/Director of Social Metrics

Mission Markets announcement in ANDE Newsletter

This month's ANDE Newsletter included a feature piece on the Mission Markets Impact Investment Platform and the integration of the IRIS indicators. To read the newsletter online, click here.

--The Mission Markets Team

Mission Markets Musings: Vicky Stein

Lately, I have found that unusual conversations are occurring in unexpected places. For example, the Community Affairs staff at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston hosted a roundtable event this week on “Financing Disability Housing in New England”. The event brought together a wide variety of organizations from five different states, ranging from social service organizations and CDFIs to bankers to discuss a subject that receives far too little attention from community development practitioners: “How can we scale the current models for financing housing for the disabled in New England?”.  I should point out; this round table is part of a series that have been hosted by Federal Reserve Banks around the country.  The Boston event was the most recent one.

While this may sound like an esoteric subject, it in fact raises important issues that we as a society have failed to confront.  In a piece prepared for the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, entitled “The Disability Housing Market:  Opportunity for Community Development Finance as the Americans with Disabilities Act Turns 20”, Charles D. Hammerman of The Disability Opportunity Fund and Samantha Bennett of the Center for Wealth Preservation note that “In 2006, there were more than 21 million people between 18 and 65 in the United States with one or more disabilities.”  Moreover, people with disabilities have among the highest poverty rates. 

Mission Markets CEO Mike Van Patten featured in Emerging Markets "Weekly Expert Interview"

Each week Emerging Markets ESG publishes an interview entitled, “Five Questions about SRI”  The interview features a practitioner’s insights about SRI in emerging markets and through Emerging Markets ESG shares this expertise with a wide global audience.  The goals of Five Questions about SRI are fourfold:
    •    To reflect on what SRI in emerging markets means to practitioners;
    •    To collect a catalogue of examples of SRI in practice in emerging markets;
    •    To raise awareness about SRI in emerging markets; and
    •    To enable SRI practitioners in emerging markets to network with peers around the world.

To see the most recent interview with Mike Van Patten, click here.

- The Mission Markets Team

Mission Markets Musings: David Meyers, PhD

The world needs some changes.  Quite a few actually.  As I go through my day, I often think about the food that I eat, the vehicles that get me where I need to go, the buildings I work and live in, and the wide variety of products I use.  I ask myself, “How much of this is truly sustainable?”  The answer is frighteningly few.  When you consider that even “organic” fruits and vegetables come from miles (or countries) away, even the best products and services seem to be part of the problem and too few are part of the solution.  Although this point of view may seem somewhat depressing, I am a strong optimist and believe that we humans can respond to the challenges ahead through our ingenuity, compassion, entrepreneurship, and greed.  Yes, greed too.  Perhaps my background will help explain my attitude.

I began my career as a scientist studying primate ecology and evolution and aiming to help conserve the earth’s threatened biodiversity.  I first went to Madagascar for research back in 1985 and have spent nearly half my adult life in that amazing yet troubled country.  My PhD (1993) research was on the effects of resource seasonality on the ecology and social behavior of an endangered Malagasy lemur – the Golden Crowned Sifaka.  As a field ecologist, I learned of the many cyclical feedback loops in the tropical forests where nothing is wasted.  One species’ waste is another’s food.  Because the heavy tropical rains have, over time, depleted most of the nutrients under the forest’s peat layer, the forests are a closed sustainable system where the energy of the sun provides the systems’ energy and all nutrients are hotly competed for by the myriad species of trees, primates, birds, insects, fungi, and other life.  Somehow we need to change our current economic system so it looks a lot more like a tropical forest than a smokestack.

Mission Markets featured in Axiom News

Axiom News published a feature story on Mission Markets' exchanges:

"Mission Markets' Exchange to Grow Impact Investing"
December 7, 2010
Camille Jenson


"Mission Markets is looking to mature and grow impact investing with the creation of a centralized marketplace that connects social and environmental stakeholders, says its founder and CEO Michael Van Patten.

"Currently, we have social markets and environmental markets, and they tend to be very separate but these are clear impact investment opportunities,” he says. “By putting them together you are enabling investors to have much more diverse portfolio and have access to multiple types of social and environmental investments in many geographic regions in many sectors and sub sectors."

To read the full article, click here.

- The Mission Markets Team

Mission Markets in Investment News Article on Impact Investing

An Investment News article entitled "Impact Investing is poised to experience growth surge" discusses the Mission Markets Platform and Impact Assets Global 50, an organization that introduces foundations and asset managers to opportunities in the impact-investing space. According to Ron Cordes, founder of Impact Assets Global 50, Mission Markets will serve as a resource for the asset managers on his platform. Here is a quote from the article:

"Mission Markets Inc., for example, has built a database of $300 million worth of offerings across 13 investments for wealthy investors. Launched in July, the platform offers private-placement investments in specific companies that fit the impact-investing category.

The platform is restricted to accredited investors, minimums start at about $25,000 and regulatory restrictions prohibit Mission Markets from identifying specific investments.

“There is a demand and the space is growing,” said Michael Van Patten, founder and chief executive of Mission Markets.

“We're seeing a macro shift away from the way people think about their investments. When you have a catastrophic financial event, people look more closely at what they're investing in.”

Mr. Cordes said that he thinks that the Mission Markets platform will serve as an investment resource for the asset managers on his Global 50 platform, which will also be restricted to investors who meet certain net-worth and income requirements.

Although experts don't expect to see an impact-investing registered mutual fund in the immediate future, the retail-class investor is being considered, according to Mr. Van Patten. He said that he hopes to roll out some state-regulated products for smaller investors early next year."

To read the full article, click here.

--The Mission Markets Team

Mission Markets featured in Axiom News Social Finance

Mission Markets was featured in an article in Axiom news discussing the emergence of the new impact investing asset class and the recently released J.P. Morgan report. Mission Markets is creating the essential infrastructure necessary to scale the social and environmental markets discussed in the report. Check out the article here!

-The Mission Markets Team

Mission Markets Musings: Howard Finkelstein

Why I Joined Mission Markets

Okay -- just to get the facts out of the way first  -- I have practiced law since 1979, put in 25+ years at super-large and large firms.  In 2002, I was asked to put together the first microfinance-backed CDO.  I knew CDOs, I didn't know microfinance.  Nine years later I can say pretty much the opposite.  I witnessed and was (I like to believe) a significant part of the birth of microfinance as an investable capital markets asset, and in many ways the forerunner of many other business models that will tend to help improve the world -- what we wonderfully call today impact investments.

For the last nine years, I have watched my clients and others with whom I have been associated build successful business models, scalable and "impactful" (to coin a term).  These have been bright, passionate people whose entire lives were lived "outside the box".  Then I have watched these people struggle mightily to get funding for their dreams.   To people going down this path, I would say, " If you can take the pressure and have a world of patience, and a sense of humor and a contact list as large as the NY phone book .... you'll survive... just barely."