Visual Journalism and the Growth of Impact Investment Capital Markets

I wrote this piece to introduce my new company, REEF Reports, in June 2011. I share it here to provide context for its founding, which ultimately provided the first visual narrative framework and creative device for systematically transforming key messages, impact data and digital media into a compelling visual storyline to explain what value is created when investors invest and organizations act to pursue their social mission.

“At the intersection of private enterprise and social service delivery, a new generation of social entrepreneurs are launching viable ventures to address our most pressing social challenges across an array of geographies and sectors. A new investment class is rising to meet their needs, and there is a groundswell of interest across the globe to invest capital for both social and environmental impact in addition to a financial return.

As these worlds intertwine, relying on common bonds of urgency and purpose, this nascent relationship between social enterprise, impact investors and communities worldwide will require a communications strategy that captures and reports the entire spectrum of meaning and metrics to inform investment decisions, attract capital, engage stakeholders and influence policy.

At the end of 2010, I started to design a visual communications strategy that would capture and convey the real wealth and higher purpose of the impact investing sector: the creation of an enabling environment for people to enjoy long, healthy and creative lives. I explored the role of social sector capacity-building, strategic communications and documentary photography in the creation, growth and sustainability of social capital markets (*estimated at around US$400 billion to US$1 trillion.) With the explosion of digital and social media, I wondered whether the transformative power of visual journalism could be a new business strategy for this emerging social movement and new asset class. Would I create new visibility and legitimacy for social enterprise and impact investing, drive awareness of issues and adoption of innovations, through a mobile, photojournalistic platform? If so, it would need to achieve the following:

• Inspire collective action and coordinated innovation, encourage alliances, build industry infrastructure

• Support the identification, capacity-building and scaling of market-ready and worthy social enterprises, and help to direct significant new capital flows to these enterprises

• Complement and reinforce emerging and established industry standards, systems and integrative reporting practices

• Capable of spanning boundaries and communicating across sectors, while appealing to a wide spectrum of key stakeholders with diverse financial expectations and social interests

• Translate social processes, complex connections, issues and technical topics to make them intelligible and compelling for non-specialized audiences

• Catalyze critical conversations about the nature of social change

I founded REEF Reports (Realizing the Ecosystem Effects of Finance™) to document, assess and promote impact investing opportunities and successes worldwide by using two of the most powerful communication tools that humankind has devised: storytelling and photography. Paired together, these art forms have proven capable of facilitating and translating highly complex social processes, while expanding our consciousness, reflecting our times and testing our courage.”

*In 2020, the global impact investing market, which seeks to generate social and/or environmental benefits while delivering a financial return, is estimated at nearly $502 billion.

WRITING

Published Work

THE POETRY OF PURPOSE: A Portrait of Women Leaders of India

By virtue of the stories we choose to tell, a new narrative can emerge from unspeakable suffering. This book carries a message about the essential nature of women's leadership in India, and its nexus—the spirit of active participation in social change.

Through photographic portraits, moments of insight and personal reflections from fifteen women leaders across India, The Poetry of Purpose reveals a path from self-discovery and awareness of choice, to the desire to strive in the service of others.

Published in March 2015.  Press Coverage | Project Website | Available on Amazon | Book Trailer

ABOUT

Mick Minard

Mick is a writer, photographer, and strategy consultant specializing in program design, marketing communications, and impact assessment. Over the past twenty years, her professional and artistic work has largely been focused on promoting promising ideas for restoring connection between human society and the natural world. 

Her photographs have been exhibited in New York City and sold commercially, and she uses visual and written narrative to inspire new forms of leadership, organizational transformation, and community engagement. 

Since 1998, Mick has worked in the United States, Europe, East Africa, and South Asia, with both non-profit and for-profit social ventures, and she has facilitated the growth of early-stage capacity-building and income-generating initiatives serving the underprivileged and the rural poor.

From 2009 - 2015, Mick led REEF Reports (Realizing the Ecosystem Effects of Finance™), a strategy consulting company she founded in response to the growth of impact investing which was unlocking significant sums of private investment capital to complement public resources and philanthropy in addressing pressing global challenges. REEF partnered with social enterprises, impact investors, foundations, academic institutions, and international development organizations (projects, teams, and networks) to design an “impact practice” to improve performance, attract capital, inform investment decisions, engage stakeholders, and influence policy. 

Mick’s public speaking engagements in the U.S. and internationally have expanded awareness of the need for a sharper focus on the world’s women farmers. In 2012 and 2013, she was invited to present her research on the subject at the UN’s 56th and 57th Commissions on the Status of Women. In 2014, she was appointed Representative to the United Nations to advocate for the empowerment of women and girls through life-long education.

Since 2015, the year her first book was published on women leaders of India, Mick has worked for the REI Co-op, the nation’s largest consumer cooperative in the U.S. She provides leadership for all brand and customer touchpoints across REI's local experiences business in Oregon; oversees the design, management, and implementation of a diverse portfolio of outdoor experiences and community programs to create positive social and environmental impact through guiding services, civic engagement and environmental stewardship, public-private sector partnerships, philanthropy and public policy initiatives. Mick is based in Portland, OR.