J.P. Morgan's International Impact Investing Challenge

Towards the end of last year J.P. Morgan, The Rockefeller Foundation, and the Global Impact Investment Network published a report suggesting that impact investing will establish itself as an important investment movement over the coming years.

Impact investments aim to solve social or environmental challenges while generating financial profit. Institutional investors, including large-scale financial institutions, pension funds, family offices, private wealth managers, foundations, individuals, commercial banks, and development finance institutions typically make impact investments in private markets by providing debt or equity to mission-driven businesses.

After releasing the report J.P. Morgan announced the International Impact Investing Challenge. According to the competition's website, competitors will be challenged to propose and defend a sustainable investment strategy for an institutional investor that has a $10 to $50 million mandate for making sustainable investments.

Twelve schools will be invited to send teams to compete in the challenge. Each school will be provided a set of selection criteria and will be responsible for selecting a team to represent their program either through an internal competition or other application process. Here are the deliverables. Teams are encouraged to think beyond venture capital fund vehicles & strategies. The final round will be held at the J.P. Morgan headquarters in NY on April 8.

Participating Schools:

Anderson School of Management, University of California Los Angeles
Booth Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago
Columbia School of Business, Columbia University
Fuqua School of Business, Duke University
Harvard Business School, Harvard University
Johnson School of Management, Cornell University
Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
Ross School of Management, University of Michigan
Said Business School, The University of Oxford
Stanford Graduate School of Business, Stanford University
Stern School of Business, New York University
The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

$40,000+ in prizes will be awarded to the winning teams. Awards will be made for overall proposals as well as those that excel in a specific categories including health, environment and emerging markets. Overall First Prize: $12,000 & 2011 Milken Institute Global Conference admission. (To see what that's all about check out the recordings from the 2010 conference.)