New Impact-Investment Fund Taps Leading Philanthropists

A leading global investment firm has started a new impact-investing fund — and is turning to a high-wattage group of philanthropists to guide its focus on social good.

TPG Growth, a company with more than $8 billion under management, has teamed up with Elevar Equity, a firm that specializes in impact investing, to start the Rise Fund. The new fund will invest domestically and overseas in seven areas: agriculture, education, energy, financial services, food, industrials and infrastructure, and technology.

Assessing investments’ social and environmental benefits is one of the biggest challenges facing the burgeoning field of impact investing. The Rise Fund is collaborating with the Bridgespan Group, a nonprofit consulting firm, to create tools to help measure investments’ social and environmental returns.

The Rise Fund was founded by Bill McGlashan, founder of TPG Growth; the singer and activist Bono; and Jeff Skoll, the former eBay president and founder of Participant Media, which produces movies to inspire social change.

The three co-chair the Founders Board, which will advise the fund on social impact. The board includes a roster of philanthropy luminaries, including Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group; Mellody Hobson, president of Ariel Investments; Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn; Mo Ibrahim, a telecommunications entrepreneur; Laurene Powell Jobs, founder of the Emerson Collective; and Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay.