Farahnaz Karim: Catalytic philanthropy, impact investing & the UN SDGs

Philanthropisms

In this episode we talk to Dr Farahnaz Karim, Founder & CEO of Insaan Group, about catalytic philanthropy, impact investing and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Including:

• What does Insaan Group do, and how did the organisation come about?
• What does the current impact investing market landscape look like? Where is the money coming from, and where is it going?
• How do we ensure that the focus on social, as well as financial, returns is maintained in impact investing?
• Is it appropriate to use philanthropic grant money as "first loss" capital to lower the risk of impact investments and make them more appealing?
• Has the emergence of impact investing increased the overall volume of resources aimed at social good, or is there a danger it is "cannibalising" money that might otherwise have been given as traditional donations?
• What is the role of government in relation to impact investing and philanthropy?
• Are social enterprise models a good way of developing trust in places where levels of trust in traditional philanthropy/NGOs are low?
• Can investment-type relationships be more empowering for those on the receiving end than gift-type relationships?
• Are the SDGs broadly focussed on the right things, or are there obvious gaps?
• Is the appeal of the SDGs partly pragmatic i.e. that even if they are not perfect, they represent a widely-understood and agreed framework for prioritisation and measurement?
• Is it a challenge for the SDGs that they are so huge in scale it can be difficult for individual organisations to relate them to their work?
• When it comes to impact measurement, do we need to balance quantitative data with qualitative data?
• Can technology play a role in making it easier to capture qualitative data?

Related links:

• Insaan Group
• Farahnaz's recent piece for Alliance, "Rethinking governance in philanthropy: where is the forgotten stakeholder?"
• Farahnaz's article for CircleMENA, "Towards the next paradigm shift in philanthropy"
• Farahnaz's 2022 Alliance piece, "Village to global village: Making sense of impact, ESG, and other ‘good’ ideas"
• Farahnaz's 2021 Alliance piece, "The nature of capital and other threats to impact"
• "Insaan – the Future of Philanthropy?" in Frank magazine
• Philanthropisms podcast episodes with Sadaf Shallwani, Cassie Robinson and Aaron Horvath
• WPM short guide to measuring impact.