Valley Home Insulation is a Latinx-owned company that offers residential insulation and weatherization services in Lawrence and the surrounding Merrimack Valley. Following the 2018 gas explosions, Columbia Gas offered 100% reimbursement for insulation and weatherization services on all homes it serves in the Merrimack Valley through the end of 2020. VHI leverages cultural competency and community presence to provide these services to low- and moderate-income residents of this region.

In 2020, BII provided VHI with a term loan, enabling them to expand their business and purchase an additional truck. BII’s loan also helped VHI hire a second crew of three workers at a living wage.

Learn more about VHI

Capital Good Fund is a Community Development Financial Institution that offers small loans and personal financial coaching to low-to-moderate income families. Their loans help people with less-than-perfect credit with a variety of expenses like medical bills, car purchases, immigration fees, and even unexpected emergencies, all at rates much lower than offered by payday lenders. In November, BII closed debt and grant investments with Capital Good Fund.

With BII’s funding, Capital Good Fund is introducing their immigration loan product to MA, helping people affordably cover the costs of immigration application! BII provided a grant so that the loans can be offered at a lower rate in our state. Additionally, we are supporting their DoubleGreen Loan product, an interest free loan that helps homeowners become more energy efficient.

Learn more about CGF

Boston Impact Initiative is looking for a Marketing Intern for 8 to 10 hours per week during Fall Semester to write content for our website and social media channels and help with virtual event planning. This is a remote and unpaid internship, but we can provide support needed to get school credit and/or funding.

Email jobs@bostonimpact.com with a resume and brief cover letter if you’re interested! Deadline for applications for Fall is Sept 15th.

• Maintain a thorough understanding of the investment thesis and mission of BII
• Create communications collateral and write content for each new investment.
• Update social media channels (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn) with portfolio updates, thought-leadership content, and other information.
• Meet goals of organically growing followers across all social media platforms.
• Assist in planning virtual events as needed.
• Miscellaneous: Perform any such duty as necessary to support BII’s impact and marketing processes.

• Must be enrolled in an undergraduate or graduate degree program
• Demonstrated interest in and understanding of economic justice, sustainability, and/or related topics
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Familiarity with the use of social media in broader communication strategy
• Resourceful, proactive, able to prioritize and navigate in a fast-paced team-oriented environment
• Ability to manage multiple tasks and to meet deadlines
• Excellent organization, attention to detail and follow-through
• Unquestioned ability to handle confidential information in a professional manner
• General understanding of investment principles, impact investing, small business, social entrepreneurship, and/or other related topics.
• Proficiency with MS Office (Excel, Word, PowerPoint)

JOB DESCRIPTION

Investment Director

Location: Boston, MA

Industry: Non-profit / Financial Services

Employment Type: Full-time

Contact:  Please send a resume and cover letter to jobs@bostonimpact.com. 

Please include INVESTMENT DIRECTOR in the title of your email. 

Overview

The Boston Impact Initiative Fund is an impact investing fund dedicated to closing the racial wealth divide. We invest integrated capital (equity, debt and grants) in regenerative local enterprises that restore the productive capacity of communities of color in Eastern Massachusetts. We are a 501(c)3 charitable loan fund that has raised $7M from values-aligned accredited and non-accredited investors.

We are seeking a full-time Investment Director to partner with our Impact Director in developing and managing a strong and vibrant portfolio. We are seeking someone who shares our beliefs that:

• Current capital markets aren’t working
• Investment decisions should not be strictly financial
• We have much to learn from emerging models of impact investing, solidarity economics and justice movements

As Investment Director, you’ll identify innovative and inclusive opportunities for lending and investing, manage and monitor portfolio performance, and build partnerships with local organizations. The successful candidate has experience in deal origination, financial analysis, capital structuring and portfolio management, and a willingness to apply those skills in directing capital toward racial justice.

The Investment Director will maintain good relations and integrity in the community and in transactions with prospective and completed investments. We are committed to healthy, long-term relationships with our portfolio companies, providing technical assistance so we can support their efforts to grow their business and deepen their social impact. An essential responsibility of this position is to model what can be done with capital and partnerships to help build a resilient and equitable local economy.

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Serve in a high-visibility leadership role to help transform local economy investing practices
• Identify opportunities for investing, lending and grantmaking
• Perform robust investment analysis, due diligence and market research
• Select and present investment opportunities to investment committee
• Coordinate closing process, including impact covenants and capital disbursement
• Maintain healthy relationships with all portfolio organizations by supporting them in increasing financial resilience and social impact
• Measure and track portfolio companies to ensure they meet impact and financial targets and reporting obligations

DESIRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

• Minimum 5 years’ experience in lending and/or investing
• Demonstrated interest in and understanding of economic justice, racial justice, gender equity, sustainability, and/or related topics
• Possess analytical skills and an interest in financial markets, public policy and social and environmental issues
• Excellent skills in quantitative analysis and creative approach to structuring debt and equity investments
• Ability to be self-directed; entrepreneurial experience a plus
• Willingness to continuously learn and adapt
• Resourceful, proactive, able to prioritize and navigate in a fast-paced team-oriented environment.
• Strong project management skills
• Excellent interpersonal skills including verbal and written communication
• Excellent organization, attention to detail and follow-through.
• Experience living and working in Boston a plus
• Bilingual in Spanish a plus

The Boston Impact Initiative Fund is an equal opportunity employer. Boston residents, women, people of color, immigrants, queer and gender nonconforming people strongly encouraged to apply.

Quality Interactions is an e-learning platform that provides cultural competency training for healthcare professionals. The platform helps healthcare providers reduce unconscious bias and as a result improve health outcomes for patients of all cultural backgrounds, including people of color, immigrant, bilingual and LGBTQ patients, and those who are uninsured. The company’s clients include Mass General Hospital, Aetna, and Dana Farber Cancer Institute. In 2019, Quality Interactions partnered with the Mayo Clinic on a large deal that has set the company up well for the next stage of growth.

In 2018, BII Fund made a convertible debt investment to support product development and growth. In 2020, BII Fund made a second loan to support company growth as they service larger contracts and expand content. We are happy to be supporting them through this stage of their business!

Seven years ago, we started the Boston Impact Initiative with a hypothesis and a dream. The hypothesis was that it was possible to create an integrated capital fund deploying equity, debt and grants to close the racial wealth divide in our extremely unequal community of Greater Boston. The dream was that if we were to prove this model out, we’d be able to share it with communities around the country who could, together, building a thriving national network of place-based funds dedicated to racial and economic justice.

Since then, we’ve put more than $6M to work at over 50 enterprises in Eastern Massachusetts that are majority governed, run and staffed by people of color, pay the vast majority of their workers well above a living wage and are building wealth for communities of color through enterprise ownership.

And now, we are embarking on the adventure of building the dream. This spring, 27 cohort members representing 12 communities will be joining the “BII Fund-Building Cohort,” an 18-month program through which existing and prospective fund managers from 12 communities will develop the financial rigor and multi-stakeholder engagement processes to structure, raise and manage a blended capital fund. The purpose of these funds is to build sustainable, inclusive and equitable local economies that restore the productive capacity of communities of color.

While each fund will be legally independent, uniquely designed to best fit its region and governed by community leaders, the funds will share core values, learning and relationships. They will opt in to share such tools and services as due diligence, impact assessments, impact covenants, investment management and fund accounting. They will be run by fund managers of color and women. Through this network, investors and philanthropists will be able to move hundreds of millions of dollars toward economic justice.

To learn more about these 27 extraordinary pioneers, please visit the BII Fund-Building Cohort page on our web site. Want to support this effort? We’re looking for co-investors, funders and partners both locally and nationally. We’d love to have you join us in this work.