Guest Posts Reflections: Three Years into the McConnell Foundation’s Journey towards 100% Impact and Net-Zero Alexandra Chamberlin Guest Posts 4 mins read February 9, 2026 News & Insights Guest Posts Reflections: Three Years into the McConnell Foundation’s Journey towards 100% Impact and Net-Zero Year 0 (2022): The how and why of Impact Investing and Net-Zero In 2022, the McConnell Foundation decided, that over the following 5 years, we would commit the entirety of our endowment toward investing for impact: generating measurable, intentional positive impact in our communities and for the environment. We also committed to achieving net-zero carbon emissions in our investment portfolio by 2050 and divesting our fossil fuel holdings by the end of 2023. As a private charitable foundation, McConnell has the privilege and the responsibility to deploy all our assets to help advance our mission: to foster a resilient, inclusive and sustainable society that can successfully address its complex challenges. The scale and the urgency of the issues facing our three main focus areas (Communities, Reconciliation and Climate) require the large-scale mobilization of public and private capital, including philanthropic funding, loans, and investments, to create lasting change. We added two mission-related impact investments to our portfolio in 2022, for a total of 16. We also committed to 5 program-related investments. By the end of 2022, 20% (market value based) of McConnell’s endowment was in impact investments. Year 1 (2023): Building the Blocks 2023 was a busy year to equip our team with the tools and resources to deliver on our commitments. We worked on and published our Climate Action Plan. In addition, we decided to publish our impact management approach as part of our 2022 Impact Report. The report is an annual publication that provides an update on the allocation of our impact investing portfolio, as well as our strategy to build a 100% impact portfolio. We added two mission-related impact investments to our portfolio in 2023, for a total of 18. By the end of 2023, 21% (market value based) of McConnell’s endowment was in impact investments. Year 2 (2024): Deepening our Impact Management and Measurement Approach In 2024, with most internal processes in place, we started looking for external feedback and testing. To advise us on our journey towards a 100% impact portfolio, we set up an Impact Advisory Committee (IAC). The IAC is made up of members of our Board, Investment Committee, and staff, as well as external impact management and measurement (IMM) experts. In addition, we progressed on our financed emissions reporting by adding an attribution analysis. We also piloted a dimension of the Social Equity Lens Investing (SELI) framework developed by Employment and Social Development Canada, to better understand the diversity of the teams stewarding our assets. Late in 2024, we joined the Endowment Impact Benchmark (EIB) program, organized by the US-based Intentional Endowment Network (IEN). BlueMark, the program’s independent verification provider, awarded McConnell a Platinum rating (the highest) indicating that we have robust policies and practices for sustainable investing. We added two impact investments to our portfolio in 2024, and exited one, for a total of 19 mission-related investments. By the end of 2024, 45% (market value based) of McConnell’s endowment was in impact investments. Year 3 (2025): Building the Next Phase of the Plan In 2025, midway through our commitments, we conducted an asset mix review with an impact lens to sequence the transition of our remaining portfolio over the next 3 years. We will have more details on this in our upcoming 2025 Impact Report (to be published in the early fall of 2026). We also joined the UN-convened Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance (NZAOA), a signatory-led group of institutional investors committed to individually transitioning their own investment portfolios to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. By the end of 2025, about 45% of our endowment by market value, and higher in terms of commitments, was in impact investments. We also completed our transition in the fixed income and infrastructure asset classes. We look forward to continuing McConnell’s impact investment and net-zero journey and sharing our progress in our yearly impact reports. Share This Article Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email
Investing for Social Good: An Overview of Program-Related Investments Neila Selouani Guest Posts 5 mins read October 9, 2024