It’s not only banks and Blackrock — some historical context and a few of the players in the ESG and SRI world.

Portfolio managers, impact investors, mixed or pure play, cleantech incubators, corporate finance departments, and other orgs, oh my! Part 1 is an overview of the history and types of players in the finance-for-good sector (part 2 offers a high level overview of Impact Investing and ESG funds).

In this 24-article series, we’ve talked about all things ESG+ — some history, definitions, concepts, examples of good & poor corporate citizenship, and why having systems thinking and a robust “alphabet soup” (CSR, CS, DEI, ESG, SDG, PPP, 9Rs, etc) culture is important not just ethically, but strategically. We’ve shared a few actions small and large sized companies have taken, and provided some reasons and ways for your company to take advantage of the employee and customer engagement that comes with a culture of purpose. If you would like the ultimate summary, “12 guidelines for an authentic Corporate Sustainability or ESG policy and culture”, drop us a line, and we’ll be happy to send it along. In this article, I’ll give a quick overview on socially responsible investing (SRI), and some of the segments that have emerged in the last 25 years.

Before delving into some of the finance for good context, I recommend you check out this general overview of the alphabet soup of corporate citizenship. This has some baseline definitions for some of the concepts related to businesses being involved in social and environmental issues such as carbon credits, corporate sustainability and social responsibility, ESG, socially responsible investing, sovereign wealth funds, and other terms in this alphabet soup. They all come down to how different entities define their goals and care for their communities.

A final note before diving in… This can be a complex issue-area to summarize because it spans the NGO, government and finance sectors — from community trust banks & micro-lending, to governments issuing bonds to improve their societies (infrastructure, health care, business start-up capital, other), to private sector finance. I’ve written/discussed the first two segments elsewhere, and will focus on private sector here.

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