* Services
  + 
×
# Twin Cities Impact Investing Ecosystem Shared Framework
A diverse group of Twin Cities based investors, entrepreneurs, advisors and field builders are working together to grow and mainstream a different kind of investing: investing for positive social, environmental impact. We seek to increase the flow of impact capital between capital sources and end-users. We invite you to join with us, bring your own experiences with and passions for impact investing and create something larger and more powerful together.
#### Background
In February 2016, a group of independent impact investing practitioners and field builders operating out of Impact Hub MSP proposed a collaborative ecosystem planning process with the goal of scaling and mainstreaming impact investing in the Twin Cities. The Bush Foundation funded the project, which was then implemented by Cogent Consulting in partnership with Impact Hub MSP.
In the first year, the project, which has since become known as the “Twin Cities Impact Investing Ecosystem Project,” had three parts. In the first part, the group mapped the current impact investment ecosystem in the Twin Cities and analyzed gaps in the ecosystem. The second part entailed imagining the desired, future state of the Twin Cities impact investing ecosystem. The third part focused on empowering the ideas and solutions generated and drafting a shared framework for building the desired ecosystem moving forward.
As a response to the gaps identified in the mapping part of the work, this Shared Framework was initially drafted by the Cogent Consulting team in collaboration with Huli Consulting, based on insight gleaned from managing the project over the first year and previous years dedicated to the movement. Cogent then requested feedback on and support for the draft from the HUB and the Project Advisory Team, consisting of ten ecosystem members and project stakeholders. We acknowledge that more can always be done to build even broader consensus (putting even more “shared” in the “shared framework”), yet we believe this framework has the baseline support necessary to guide our actions as we move forward, independently and yet, together.
#### Overarching Values
1. **Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)**— We seek to engage more marginalized communities in co-creating our ecosystem as sources of capital, end-users of capital, intermediators, and field builders. Under-represented communities include women, people of color, LGBTQ, socio-economic disadvantaged, older adults, youth, vulnerable, and veterans.
2. **Real, Measurable Social Impact**— We believe that impact investments are essential in creating a large variety of positive environmental and social impacts and there are many approaches to measuring impact. Each of us recognizes that while some impact investments may not overlap with our personal priorities, as a community, we commit to real, measurable social impact.
3. **Innovation**— We recognize that in order to truly mainstream impact investing, new ways of investing and new business models that are outside of today’s norms need to be created.  As an ecosystem, we encourage innovative approaches and risk taking such as integrated capital, also called blended capital, as well as new financial products.
4. **Transparency**— We actively encourage more openness about impact investing opportunities, activity, and results. We will be a voice to encourage investors and entrepreneurs to share procedures, successes and failures.
#### Our Ecosystem Shared Pillars
##### PILLAR 1: Commit to Shared Definition & Common Concepts
We use the World Economic Forum’s definition of impact investment, “Impact investing is an investment approach intentionally seeking to create both financial return as well as positive social or environmental impact that is actively measured.” We recognize that impact investing is a “Big Tent” and includes a variety of intended impacts, preferences for impact measurement, financial return expectations, asset and entity types.
**ACTION STEP:** Discuss this definition of impact investing and existing shared conceptual frameworks and, if necessary, emerge with a proposal for updating them. Work toward consensus and a common commitment to using language consistently.
**ACTION STEP:** Work toward establishing common definitions and frameworks for terminology and concepts that often intersect with the impact investing movement such as “social enterprise,” “social business,” and “social entrepreneur.”
##### PILLAR 2: Measure Impact and Success
Our goal is to scale and mainstream impact investing in the Twin Cities. As we grow, it is increasingly important to define what success looks like and how that success will be measured, when, and by whom. This will help us to prioritize our time and resources, as well as help us know if our various efforts are working or not.
**ACTION STEP:  Work toward establishing a common framework, such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals, that all members of the impact investing ecosystem can use to identify the types of impact they are seeking to advance.**
**ACTION STEP:**Identify expert resources to determine appropriate metrics and measure results.
##### PILLAR 3: Communicate and Increase Access
We believe our ecosystem needs a basic online presence that promotes our shared definitions, values, vision, and framework and serves as a central node for communicating about the impact investing activity happening in the ecosystem. Our online presence should be clear, consistent, and regularly updated.
**ACTION STEP: Discuss how can we use more relatable language to mainstream impact investing conversations. What tools are required to push these conversations into more spaces?**
**ACTION STEP:**Add to the new social media presence for the ecosystem and build a website that expands access to, from and within the ecosystem.
##### PILLAR 4:  Support Promising Solutions
Our community will aggressively develop solutions, in whatever form they might take, that can open up new sources of impact capital to the ecosystem, reduce transaction costs or otherwise facilitate the flow of impact capital from existing sources, and/or help create more and higher quality investment opportunities ready for impact capital.
**ACTION STEP:  Support, participate, and promote promising new and existing solutions including:**
* Finnovation Lab/Impact Hub Collaboration, Fellowships and Accelerator
* Venn Foundation
* MI3 (Minnesota Impact Investing Initiative)
* ConnectUP! MN
* CDFI’s of color: Catalyst, Meda, NDC
* Bush Foundation Social Business seed fund
**ACTION STEP:**Nurture the growing momentum around the following impact themes:
* Affordable Housing community innovations
* Clean energy sector emerging solutions
* Vulnerable people
* Sustainable agriculture
* Economic justice
**ACTION STEP:   Prioritize solutions that address the gaps identified in our ecosystem through the mapping work in 2016-17. First and foremost, the map shows a need for early stage high risk capital for innovative entrepreneurs and disruptive impact.**
**ACTION STEP:**Emphasize solutions that increase impact investment activity across a variety of impact areas over time.
**ACTION STEP:**Encourage all of our infrastructure projects to work together, promote each other, and find practical ways to help each other find traction.
##### PILLAR 5: Develop Talent
Our ecosystem believes in the power of people to create change. To advance the practice of impact investing, we will each do our part to develop impact investing skills and experiences for diverse people all across the ecosystem.
**ACTION STEP:**Bring colleagues who are new to the ecosystem and from marginalized communities to impact investing events and connect them to our social media presence.
**ACTION STEP:**  Consider who is not involved who should be when attending other ecosystem events: reach out to your networks.
© 2023 Cogent Consulting PBC | Minneapolis, MN | Susan Hammel, CEO
Design & Development by 
!
## Social Entrepreneur Roundtable
Cogent’s Social Entrepreneur Roundtables are an opportunity for social enterprises to discuss the challenges of entrepreneurship and impact investing as well as to share and exchange resources.
#### Who
Public benefit corporations, for-profit and not-for-profit enterprises, and individuals are invited to the Social Entrepreneurs Roundtables. The only requirement is that the participating organization is mission-driven and interested in the impact investing community. After exploring roundtables of up to 15 participants, we have limited the number of attending organizations to 4 in order to maintain an intimate setting where we can dive deep into topics with the entrepreneurs.
#### What
The purpose of the Social Entrepreneur Roundtables is to create an environment of peer learning that facilitates the expansion of the Twin Cities Impact Investing Ecosystem. We have found that group discussions are fruitful for entrepreneurs because although the stage, scale, and structure of each of the attending organizations varies, their questions about impact investing and business overlap. As a result, the agenda for the roundtables has evolved to emphasize open discussion followed by networking:
**Agenda**
15 mins – Introductions
45 mins – Open discussion guided by Cogent
30 mins – Informal networking
The Social Entrepreneur Roundtables serve as an easy, low commitment entry point to the Twin Cities Impact Investing Ecosystem for the entrepreneurs and an efficient way to keep a pulse on the activity and challenges of the social enterprise community for Cogent and the Hub.
#### Where
The Social Entrepreneur Roundtables are held at community partners around the metro. Previous locations have included Impact Hub MSP, The Improve Group and James J. Hill Library. Please see the Eventbrite page for each Social Entrepreneur Roundtable for the specific location.
#### Register
#### What Susan Was Doing in October
### ON October 1, 2024
For grown-ups, back-to-school season means it’s Fall conference season. I’m excited to learn, share and connect at three national events: **learn** at the , **share** our Midwest Impact Investing Landscape scan at Impact Engine’s  on October 1st, **share** at the , and **connect** at  October 28-30th. Ping me if you’ll be there as I’d love to catch-up with you.
### Leave a Reply 
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked \*
Comment \*
Name \*
Email \*
Website
Δ
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. .
### What I'm doing now
Hope in the new year is our favorite team gratitude today and despite the very real challenges we face as humans, I’m positive about our future. People and place: they came up over and over again in our  study and events. We care about where we live, whether that’s in a small town in Iowa or a major city like Chicago. We care about the people who live there. Imagine if impact investing in people and place was the norm. How different would our places look? My place is Minnesota and I care deeply that all our people have a chance to find their healthy place here. What’s your place? Who do you care about? Do your investments match? If not, there’s plenty of chances to invest. As one my colleagues said today, “it’s 2025: let’s thrive”.
Design & Development by
#### What Was Susan Doing in June
### ON June 1, 2024
Smart impact investors see and invest in talent others overlook. For example, only 2% of venture capital funding flows to female-founded companies (2022 data, World Economic Forum). Does anyone think that makes sense on any level? Anyone? Let’s get beyond the tired debates and focus on investing in talent across gender, race, color, ethnicity, geographic location, and socio-economic status. We will all be stronger when talented people have a decent shot at growing their ideas and companies.
#### Going Deep Into Capital Access for Businesses Led by People of Color
### ON March 22, 2024
It is easy to make assumptions about why some businesses succeed and others fail. We can blame lack of knowledge or expertise. We can pass judgements as outsiders. But when you take the time to speak to those that serve small business owners, real barriers to capital are revealed that are too often overlooked.
We spent a year delving into the capital access barriers for BIPOC-owned businesses in Chicago. Through interviews with 18 different business services providers and an analysis of local and national capital sources, we uncovered key insights on how effective business services work. By listening to those embedded in neighborhoods across Chicago, we deepened our understanding  of the complexity business owners from under-resourced communities face accessing capital.
1. **Building trust is crucial to service:**  Trust between business owners of color and capital providers is primary to service effectiveness.  Many business owners begin new relationships with mistrust.  Negative past experiences with banks and false “experts” reduce these owners’ willingness to trust. And that trust is not easily transferred to another service or capital source. Building trust takes time and continued commitment for it to be successful.
2. **Finding available services is confusing:**  First, business owners turn to a google search and get a confusing array of results without any way to know which is right for them. They may ask friends and family, yet too many don’t know someone who owns businesses they can learn from. Their next stop is often the local businesses they frequent, to get advice on where to get a loan or business help.  These informal referrals often result in a mismatch between needs and services.  Finding better ways to alert businesses about the services available to them is a continuing challenge.
3. **Funded coordination made a big difference:**  We concluded that Chicago has a robust network of business services for people of color. That network has been significantly enhanced by support from our client, Fund for Equitable Business Growth (FEBG), which provided grants for coordination efforts that build trusting relationships and strong referral networks between multiple service providers and capital sources. The unique role played by FEBG was praised by those funded.  And it is a model that could be replicated in other metropolitan areas.
4. **Covid 19 stay at home rules had unanticipated benefits:**  Coordination among service providers was enhanced by the changes caused by Covid.  The explosion of virtual coaching and training in place of in-person interactions improved the ability of business owners to engage with services they would otherwise ignore due to the long travel times to far away parts of the Metropolitan Area.  In addition, local banks were anxious to disperse the SBA Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funds.  They worked with local business service organizations to reach small businesses and coordinated with them to ensure the funds were distributed.
5. **Capital may not be what business owners need:** Business service providers help owners to become capital ready. Many owners are not ready to seek capital. They are turned away by banks and other capital sources because they lack the business and financial plan or collateral expected by lenders. We learned more assistance is needed to help business owners complete complex government applications and to meet unique licensing requirements of their industry, whether it is food production, food service, building construction or childcare.
6. **Each business has its own unique set of needs:**  Even with a wide array of services available, each business needs different kinds of help to access capital and to grow their business.  Owners cannot do this alone. Nor can they continue to rely on the individual at the business services organization to help, as those professionals are in great demand.  The best solution is to find trusted advisors who stay engaged with them all along the growth path. Some can do this on their own.  Finding ways to make access to trusted business experts easy will strengthen their whole network of services.
7. **Assessment of virtual  options is important:** Web based solutions may also help, but they need to be vetted and connected into the network of service providers. There are a plethora of national technology based solutions that are emerging. They may be online training programs, directories of capital sources, online business operational tools and so much more.  Neither business owners or business services providers have the time necessary to assess each of them.  We recommended that FEBG take on this role.
Our work to uncover overlooked barriers can help service providers better understand the steps needed to increase accessibility for business owners of color. Building trust and empathy for the entrepreneur is the first place to start.  For more information and the full executive summary, contact us.
About Terri:
Terri Barreiro is an expert in systems change and a mission-driven venture advisor. She is an adjunct instructor and fellowship advisor at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota. She is co-founder of and volunteer venture coach at Impact Hub MSP and consultant to nonprofit and philanthropic organizations.
She is co-author of Social Entrepreneurship: the Journey from Issue to Viable Venture and founder of the Donald McNeely Center for Entrepreneurship serving the College of Saint Benedict and Saint Johns’ University. She brings to her work more than 30 years of experience as a nationally recognized nonprofit and philanthropy leader with extensive experience in United Way, corporate giving, and family foundation operations. She earned an MBA and BA cum laude at the University of Minnesota as well as completed an Executive MBA program at Carnegie Mellon University. She has enjoyed volunteering throughout her life, currently serving on the boards of Folk School Warroad, Market Access Fund, and Impact Hub MSP which she co-founded in 2014.  Enjoying birds, nurturing native gardens and prairies is how she shares her leisure hours with her husband.