Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN)

The Global Impact Investing Network is the main international membership body for impact investing. It describes its members as asset owners and managers building a future where financial returns go alongside measurable benefits for people and the planet, and its membership list runs from Morgan Stanley and UBS to the Ford Foundation and Temasek.

Who joins

Membership is organisational rather than individual, and there is a dedicated category for family offices and foundations. Applications are reviewed.

The badge on this listing marks it as an impact and philanthropy network. That is what it is, and a family with no impact allocation will find little here. For one that has made the allocation, this is the body that sets much of the shared vocabulary.

How membership works

The dues schedule is published in full, which is rare in this category, and it is structured by what kind of organisation you are and where you operate.

Family offices and foundations pay US$10,000 a year, in both developed and emerging markets. Enterprise members, meaning organisations above US$10 billion in assets or US$1 billion in revenue, pay US$12,800. For-profit organisations pay US$6,400 in developed markets or US$3,200 in emerging ones. Not-for-profits pay US$4,300 or US$2,100 on the same split.

The emerging market discount is a deliberate design choice: it keeps the network from becoming a rich-country club discussing investment in countries whose own institutions cannot afford to be in the room.

What members get

Working groups are the substance, organised around particular themes and geographies, and they are where members do actual joint work rather than listen to presentations.

Around them sit Members Day, roundtables, a knowledge hub, a member connection tool, on-demand learning, research and speaking opportunities.

The most widely used output is IRIS+, the GIIN's system for measuring and managing impact, and members get guidance on applying it. That deserves emphasis for a family office. The hardest part of impact investing is not finding deals; it is knowing whether the impact claimed is real and comparable across a portfolio. IRIS+ is the closest thing the field has to a common standard, and it is the reason many institutions join.

At US$10,000 a family office should judge this against its actual impact allocation. For a family with a modest allocation, the cost is hard to justify against the philanthropy networks in this directory. For one deploying seriously, the measurement framework and the working groups are the argument.