Multimedia: ‘Philanthropy Can’t Do it Alone’

Adam Wolfensohn and Jason Scott recently teamed up to create Encourage Capital, an asset management firm founded on the idea that it is possible to achieve positive social and environmental outcomes, while also achieving a profitable financial return. The new fund came out of the merger of EKO Asset Management Partners and Wolfensohn’s Fund Management, bringing together a total of $250 million in investment capital.

In this video Adam Wolfensohn talks about how he was aware of a tremendous desire on the part of investors for investment opportunities that took social, environmental and financial returns into account. It was that observation led him and Jason Scott to found this new venture. In a recent Impact Alpha article Ricardo Bayon, another founding partner of EKO, talks along the same lines about how he sees an amazing opportunity in this partnership and believes there is money sitting “on the sidelines” just waiting for good managers with expertise and a history of success.

These are enormous problems that interact with capital markets and just philanthropy and government alone won’t solve any of these issues. And capital markets alone won’t solve these issues. You need to have a strategic framework within which to do philanthropy and all different types of investment from the very large institutional and commercial, to the experimental.

Watch the Bloomberg Business interview with Adam Wolfensohn below to learn more about Encourage Capital and their approach to impact investing.