Our story

The rise of impact investing

Impact investing, where capital is invested with the intention to generate measurable positive social or environmental impact alongside financial return, is responsible investment in its most powerful form. Assets invested for impact have grown rapidly over the past decade, but still represent only a small fraction of global assets under management.

The global rise of impact investing made possible by a growing ecosystem of pioneering not-for-profits, social enterprises, commercial businesses, investors, advisers and policy makers, has a crucial role to play in addressing the two major challenges facing the world: climate change and social inequality.

Building connections

Partnerships between governments, grantors, donors and concessional and commercial impact investors, to provide blended finance which mobilises private sector capital are key to creating thriving and inclusive communities and securing a socially just transition to a net zero world.   

At Collington Capital, we contribute to creating a financial system where the social and environmental impacts of every investment will be targeted alongside financial return. We believe that, in time, authentic impact investing and blended finance, where capital is pooled together from sources including philanthropic funding, social and commercial investment and public money, will become mainstream.

Collington Capital’s work, alongside the work of others in the field, ensures that the impact investment propositions emerging at the margins can move into the mainstream, build scale and create a vibrant market that works for all participants and stakeholders. This will require the building of connections between the owners of private capital and the enterprises which deliver impact.

Cornerstone actors in the impact investment chain are:

• Grantors and donors who are keen to optimise the impact of their charitable giving by using blended finance as a means to crowd-in concessional and commercial capital thereby leveraging their funding and creating sustainable funding solutions. Grantors and donors need to access blended finance impact investment opportunities that are aligned with the causes they care about.

• Investors who want to integrate impact into their investment decisions. Asset owners and investment managers  need both supportive fiduciary frameworks and investable opportunities at scale, with clear routes to identify genuine impact investment opportunities. Each investor will have their own position on the risk and return spectrum and their own impact goals.

• Investees across the globe, with the delivery of impact central to their business models, who are operating in risk averse markets and require capital to scale their impact. They often need support to assess their financing needs and develop appropriate investment propositions that bring together multiple forms of capital via innovative blended finance solutions.

• Advisers are often a missing hidden link in the impact investment chain, connecting grantors, donors, investors and investees. They bring the knowledge and capability to create impact investment propositions, including blended finance structures, and to raise philanthropic funding and impact investment which enables impact capital to flow effectively across the impact investment chain.

The capital markets need remedies to market inefficiencies, information asymmetries and missing markets that inhibit the delivery of social and environmental impact at scale.

Theory of Change

Collington Capital aims to mobilise US$500mn of catalytic philanthropic funding and investment capital over five years.

Collington Capital raises philanthropic funding, integrates impact into investment strategies, builds impact investment readiness, structures impact investment vehicles and raises investment capital.

The founders of Collington Capital believe that, in the future, generating positive impact alongside financial return will be central to mainstream investing.

Blended finance and advisers

Collington Capital believes that the mainstreaming of blended finance vehicles, which bring together multiple sources of funding and investment, is critical to the mobilisation of impact capital and the delivery of social impact at scale.

The ecosystem of advisers who design the blended finance impact solutions and mobilise the impact investment capital must be strengthened. Their work is critical, yet often overlooked and underfunded. Well-funded advisers dedicated to a focus on impact investment are the key missing link between cornerstone actors in the impact investment chain.

Collington Capital meets the need for advisers with the knowledge, experience and networks to build connections between the participants in the impact investment chain, to develop and launch fully funded blended finance impact investment vehicles, and to mobilise social and commercial impact capital at scale to accelerate progress towards a more sustainable world.

Working partnerships

Our aim is to create long-term relationships, built on our values, that cut across the silos that limit innovation. Our ability to work across the three entities of The Collington Capital Group reflects, in microcosm, the way different sectors as a whole could work together to move blended finance into the mainstream.

We value deep, aligned partnerships across the sector, building communities of practice, sharing learning and research, and collaborating to achieve a shared vision. We look forward to welcoming others from financial services and the social sector with a similar commitment to creating a world in which capital markets drive positive social impact.

Inspiration and experience

The inspiration of Olivia Collington Dickson’s family’s pioneering work to achieve social justice, combines with the Founder Partners’ recent experience of Capital markets to create Collington Capital. A group whose vision is to realise the potential of capital markets to play a pivotal role in transforming the delivery of social impact at scale.