Knowledge Items

After a successful RCT and pilot, Evidence Action’s scaling efforts led to decreasing impact. It took a step back to focus on behavior change, right-sizing data collection, and improving infrastructure. Erin Worsham, Robyn Fehrman, Catherine Clark 2017

VisionSpring launched — and then shuttered — a retail “hub and spoke” model in Latin America. The scaling experiment led to valuable lessons about knowing when to pivot and preparing to fail. Erin Worsham, Robyn Fehrman, Cathy Clark 2017

What is scaling social impact and why is it so hard? Pivoting to Impact cuts across sectors and geographies to distill critical lessons learned for all social enterprises and funders seeking impact at scale. Pivoting to Impact shares key takeaways about scale: Five common roadblocks to scale are described in this report along with tips […]

Jean Case, CEO of the Case Foundation and Chairman of the National Geographic Society, joined the 2017 Sustainable Business and Social Impact (SBSI) conference for a fireside chat with Professor Cathy Clark. Jean and Cathy discuss trends in the impact investing field, how the Case Foundation is working to make impact investing mainstream, the importance […]

50% of all hospital admissions and deaths in Kenya are related to non-communicable diseases. By 2030, non-communicable diseases are projected to be the leading cause of death in Africa. This is just one statistic that highlights the healthcare challenges East Africa faces. Yet even with these challenges, a system ripe for innovation and opportunity exists, […]

By Cathy Clark and Carrie Gonnella Academic institutions can help build the impact investing field by teaching students a fuller suite of skills, clarifying the range of career paths open to them, and developing a better theoretical and practical knowledge base. https://ssir.org/articles/entry/three_lessons_for_impact_investing_education_programs

NAB-Infographic I got the call from the White House, in May 2014. “We’re going to have some major new commitments of impact investment capital at the meeting in June. Would you be interested in helping us track how the money is spent?” What do you say to a call like that when you run an […]

The Annie E. Casey Foundation, a private foundation dedicated to improving the lives of America’s children and families, engaged InSight at Pacific Community Ventures — with research support from CASE at Duke University — to conduct the first comprehensive third-party evaluation of its Social Investment Program, a $125 million allocation from its endowment dedicated to mission […]

Cathy Clark, Director of the CASE Initiative on Impact Investing and Co-Author of The Impact Investor: Lessons in Leadership and Strategy for Collaborative Capitalism, discusses how investors, foundations, public officials, students and others can engage and succeed in the dynamic and fast-growing field of impact investing. The conversation is moderated by MacArthur’s Director of Impact […]

Catalyzing Impact through Investment How can an innovative investment intermediary work with funds, governments, and enterprises to catalyze the impact investment market across a country? Nick O’Donohoe, former Global Head of Research at JP Morgan, spoke in 2015 about the foundation of Big Society Capital and its work dedicated to the development of social impact […]