Great Philanthropists

America is blessed with many and Fast Company reports on one.

An excerpt.

“Call it a midlife crisis gone terribly right. After 28 years in finance, Ron Cordes--co-chairman of the $21 billion asset management firm Genworth--is dedicating his energy to building an online portal that will make impact investing a whole lot easier.

"I spent the first half of my life building businesses designed to be the best in the world," Cordes tells Fast Company. "For the second half, I really want to support businesses that are the best for the world."

“As he approached the age of 50, Cordes found himself in rural Uganda, in a village five hours off the beaten track. The place was full of widows who had lost their husbands to a two-decade long civil war; Cordes had funded a small microfinance program there, and the women were now running successful small businesses and supporting their kids. "One woman came up to me and said, 'We appreciate it when [white people] come to try to save our children, but we need to be able to save our own children. Thank you for investing in us so we can do that.' I'll never forget that moment."

“That was the moment Cordes realized empowerment was more powerful than pity. He started to brainstorm ways in which his expertise as a financial manager could help create opportunities like this on a much larger scale. Now, with a new product he's calling ImpactAssets, Cordes is adding a crucial element to the impact investing space.

“ImpactAssets is a platform that will bridge high-rolling investors with social enterprises. Financial advisers will find information about solid impact investment options. The absence of a good system of finding, processing, and measuring impact investments, he says, is barring billions of dollars from being invested in good causes.

"There's no ecosystem to help advisers have conversations with their clients about social and environmental investments,” says Cordes. “U.S. investors own $37 trillion of investment capital. Even catalyzing 1% of that is $370 billion--enough to have amazing, groundbreaking, life-changing differences."

“Most people already have philanthropic causes that they support. Meanwhile, entrepreneurs all over the world are starting businesses within these issue areas that are also investable business opportunities. "Part of the process is to create awareness that these opportunities exist," Cordes says. "Once people are aware, we need to create opportunities to turn that awareness into engagement, and then to turn that engagement into actual dollar investments. That's what's going to solve problems."