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Value, Values, and Valuation: The Marketization of Charitable Foundation Impact Investing

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Abstract

Based on an abductive analytic study, we examine financial and social value incorporation in the multi-valued market of impact investing. This paper draws on interviews with investment professionals in 54 charitable foundations, intermediary and field building organizations in the impact investing market, to compare market objectives with practice, and to determine whether social and financial values are incorporated, thus producing ‘returns’ of both types through market exchange. We find unincorporated valuation is apparent at both the market level and for several types of investors in contrast with the incorporated or even integrated valuations of other investors. This demonstrates that rather than incorporating logics in a binary or hybrid way, valuation in the moral market of impact investing occurs in a multiplicity of ways and on different levels of the market, depending on a variety of factors including adherence to traditional financial market standards and market design and maintenance.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Professor Saurabh Lall for their suggestions and feedback on this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1007 W. Harrison St., (MC 312), Chicago, IL, 60607, USA

    Kirsten Andersen

  2. Helene and Grant Wilson Center for Social Entrepreneurship and Dyson College of Arts and Sciences, Pace University, 163 William Street, 21st Floor, New York, NY, 10038, USA

    Rebecca Tekula

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  1. Kirsten Andersen
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Correspondence to Kirsten Andersen.

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Andersen, K., Tekula, R. Value, Values, and Valuation: The Marketization of Charitable Foundation Impact Investing. J Bus Ethics 179, 1033–1052 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-022-05159-1

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