2017 has been another busy year for Bridges: we closed our largest ever fund, launched pioneering new strategies in both the UK and the US, made a number of exciting new investments across the platform, and even changed our name: to Bridges Fund Management (to better reflect the breadth of our platform).

Within the portfolio, we have seen record levels of growth – and continued to deliver some powerful social and environmental impact. This report draws out some of these stories in more detail, but just to take a few headline figures from across the portfolio this year, our investments have:

• Delivered 1.3m hours of quality care
• Provided healthcare services to almost 40,000 people
• Helped over 2,600 children achieve better educational outcomes
• Averted more than 30,000 tonnes of carbon emissions
• Supported over 2,600 jobs

2017 has also seen a continued rise in the number of new entrants coming into sustainable and impact investing. This is a hugely exciting trend; and a much-needed one, given the scale of the problems we face. But it presents a challenge, too: as these new entrants join the field, all with their own goals, metrics and methodologies, how do we make sure that everyone thinks and talks about ‘impact’ in a broadly similar way? If we fail to get this right, there’s a real risk that expectations may become misaligned and different actors along the impact value chain may end up disappointed.

A key part of the answer, we believe, is the Impact Management Project: an industry-wide effort (facilitated by Bridges Impact+) to agree on some common fundamentals for how we talk about and manage impact. Our report this year includes a special section that introduces some of the key concepts emerging from the Impact Management Project, and explains how this emerging consensus is informing our own approach as an investor.

Read the report here:  (screen view)  (print view)