Invest for Impact: Maximizing the Impact of W.K. Kellogg Foundations Mission Driven Investment Portfolio

Impact investing is an exciting, fast-growing field that holds promise to generate both social and financial value. However, its full potential has yet to be released. For that to happen, impact investors would need to adopt a systems perspective when allocating capital. Only by adopting a systems perspective, investors can catalyse change that has the potential toproduce disruptive change.The imperative to disrupt and catalyse positive change, has guided the W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF) to expand their innovative work to deploy more of their endowment for impact through the creation of their Mission Driven Investment portfolio. The Invest for Impact Framework, introduced in this report, is a management and governance tool created by KKS Advisors on behalf of WKKF and seeks to help mission driven investors in four ways. First, as an assessment tool for systems-level impacts duringinvestment due diligence. Second, as a diagnostic tool post investment to understand portfolio level interactions and synergies across investments. Third, as a monitoring tool for assessing whether investees are delivering the expected impact. Fourth, as a collaboration tool where different teams working across investment and grant making teams could have a platform for cross-learning, information exchange and collaboration.While there are tremendous data deficiencies plaguing the field, we find promising pathways for aligning mission and investments with rigor. Therefore, the framework is evidence-based and research driven. It focuses on the assessment of the following four categories; alignment and evidence, measurement quality, scalability of impact and potential for disruption. We apply the framework in the case of three investees to verify and showcase its practicality and decision usefulness. This could not have been done without the help of the investees who provided us with value insights, data and their time.The framework can enable all types of mission-oriented investors to better weigh up alternative opportunities for impact in the marketplace. Although originally developed for WKKF's Mission Driven Investment Portfolio, the learnings and approach are designed to be applicable to any impact investor. We hope you will find it useful