Matthew Patsky, CEO of Boston-based Trillium Asset Management, can’t hide his frustration. Patsky’s firm, which manages its roughly $1 billion in assets within a socially responsible framework, allocates about 2.5 percent to impact investing, an area devoted to companies and projects pursuing a social mission.
But Trillium’s clients, which include pension funds, foundations and endowments, often tell Patsky that they want closer to 5 percent of their capital in impact investments. Without any sort of impact investing stock exchange, he doesn’t think this demand can find an outlet. “It’s the same problem with almost every instrument in the impact investing space: There is no market,” Patsky says. “There needs to be a clearinghouse for this space because we’ve got two big issues that need to be solved. No. 1 is liquidity. Taking care of that would solve No. 2, which is pricing.”
In other words, can an investor like Patsky be confident of selling his impact ....