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How Impact Investing Is Creating New Opportunities For Founders

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Meet The Investors Maximizing Happiness Over ROI By Funding Causes They Care About: Why Prioritizing Impact May Be Smarter Investing

Colleen Schell wanted to expand her business, but didn’t think she’d get investors to back her, because the company would never have a huge ROI even though it was high on impact. And also because she knew that only two percent of investment goes to female founders.

The company she founded, FABx, works with people who want to become tomorrow’s visionaries through public speaking and storytelling. She supports coaches, entrepreneurs, nonprofit leaders and artists, some of whom she helps with scholarships, as well as providing community training for youth, the terminally ill, and the incarcerated.

The bottom line: She had a huge passion to give voice to the voiceless, but she herself was afraid to step into the ring.

The Softening Of The Sharks: Investors Go From Head To Heart

So when Schell went to the Impact Accelerator Summit, she didn’t have high hopes to find funding. But she was stunned when investors started talking about ROH, “Return On Humanity,” and the importance of risks aligned with values.

Two of them, Vince Covino and Monte Lee-Wen, told her they plan to invest in her company and support its success with strategic direction and partnerships. Covino told me it’s because of “the depth of her impact, and the work she does is profoundly underserved.” Schell told me, “Covino and Lee-Wen are changing the rules of investing, focusing on what works to make the world a better place, as opposed to what worked in the past. They’re willing to take bold actions. Because of them, I can fulfill my vision.”

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Schell also told me that Covino and Lee-Wen previously didn’t invest this way, which made their shift toward impact even more remarkable. “These two now want to help people,” Schell says. “They still make money, but are happy to make less if it’s doing good.”

Trying To Create A System That Will Build A World That Works For Everybody

Vince Covino is the founder of Impact Accelerator Circle, whose stated goal is “to fund investors that believe impact and profit aren’t mutually exclusive; are ready to build with integrity, not just hustle harder; and who understand your mission, not just your metrics.”

The people they fund meet regularly for training and mentorship, and then have an opportunity at an annual summit to try to get more funding, by pitching to investors who are looking for purpose-driven companies.

The best way to understand these pioneering and inspirational investors is to hear it directly from them:

Here’s how Covino described his approach:

“I’m watching a shift happen in real time. The founders who are winning today aren’t the loudest or the flashiest; they’re the ones solving human problems with their brains and hearts aligned. When you strip away the ego, the vanity metrics, and the unicorn fantasies, what’s left are leaders who see that businesses are just great vehicles to share their gifts, to serve others. That’s where the real upside is.

“The investors in this space aren’t just chasing yield. They’re asking, ‘Who are we becoming through the way we deploy capital?’ And honestly, that question is far more revealing, more important than any spreadsheet. If our investments don’t reflect the world we want our kids to inherit, we’ve lost touch with our hearts.

“Supporting women founders isn’t a political stance for us. It’s a performance stance. When someone has been underestimated their whole damn life, and they still show up and execute in their native feminine energy, get your checkbook out.

“I have six kids, and the more time I spend with them and their friends, the more convinced I am that companies who serve humanity best will outperform over the long run. Not because it creates the most net value for our species, but because consumers are quickly shifting away from companies that only care about the bottom line.

“The future belongs to leaders who can scale impact while staying tethered to their hearts. That’s the kind of founder we’re backing.”

Covino’s Top 5 Advice For Impact Investors

  1. To maximize return as well as personal happiness, invest in causes you care deeply about.
  2. Prioritize integrity over optics.
  3. Develop a deep care and mentorship with those you invest in.
  4. Before making the investment, set the standard for incorruptible values and radical honesty.
  5. Invest heavily in your founder’s emotional development, vision for impact, and financial mastery.

Top 5 Advice For Impact Founders

  1. Lead closer to the heart, and from that place, mold a new reality.
  2. Make your obsession with execution impossible to ignore.
  3. Be self sourced, deeply, in who you serve and why it matters.
  4. Build your inner leadership as seriously as your product.
  5. Communicate your impact in concrete, measurable terms.

Why Return On Humanity Is Actually Better Investing

Monte Lee-Wen is the founder of Cairi Legacy Partners. When his company invests in real estate, they invest in multifamily projects that build returns and communities. In venture capital, it’s in frontier technologies with long-term impact. In wealth management, they support families to preserve generational wealth, while mentoring young people to manage it responsibly.

Here’s how Lee-Wen described his approach:

“For decades, institutional investing has been dominated by a singular question: ‘What’s the IRR?’ But the families I work with, those managing multi-generational wealth, are increasingly asking different questions: ‘What kind of world are we building for our children and grandchildren?’and ‘What kind of legacy are we leaving behind?’

“Return on Humanity isn’t soft thinking, it’s strategic evolution. When we invest in impact founders, particularly women who’ve been systematically underfunded, we’re not accepting lower returns. We’re recognizing that the companies solving our most pressing challenges, such as healthcare access, energy, climate resilience, and education, represent some of the most significant market opportunities of the next 30 years.

“At the Impact Accelerator Summit, I watched founders with exceptional execution capabilities who are often dismissed by traditional metrics that were never designed for them. These entrepreneurs aren’t just building companies; they’re architecting solutions for problems that affect billions of people. That’s not impact instead of returns, that’s impact as the pathway to sustainable, meaningful returns.

“The shift to ROH requires us to question the sacred cows: Why do we demand that every business scale to unicorn status? Why do we prioritize extraction over sustainability? Why have we excluded half the population from capital access? The answers often reveal that we’ve been optimizing for the wrong outcomes.

“This isn’t charity. It’s recognizing that investing in humanity, in diverse perspectives, in sustainable business models, and in companies that create value for all stakeholders might simply be better investing.”

Lee-Wen’s Top 5 Advice For Impact Founders

1. Know your impact metrics as well as your financials.

“If you’re building an impact company, you need to be fluent in two languages simultaneously. You must be able to articulate exactly how many lives you’re changing, how much carbon you’re sequestering, or how many underserved communities you’re reaching. Investors committed to ROH want to see both bottom lines.”

2. Passion without execution is poetry; master both.

“I’ve seen too many founders with world-changing visions who can’t build sustainable business models. Master both the mission and the mechanics. Your purpose might open doors, but your execution keeps them open.”

3. Find investors who share your values, not just your cap table.

“The wrong investor will push you toward compromises that erode everything you built the company to achieve. The right investor becomes a partner in your mission.”

4. Build sustainable unit economics; impact doesn’t excuse poor business models.

“And speaking of business models, impact doesn’t excuse poor unit economics. The most powerful impact companies prove that doing good and doing well aren’t mutually exclusive; they’re interdependent.”

5. Your mission is your competitive advantage: Lead with it.

“Finally, understand this: Your mission isn’t a nice-to-have marketing message. In a world where consumers, employees, and investors are increasingly values-driven, leading with your purpose isn’t soft; it’s strategic. Own it. Lead with it. Let it differentiate you in the market.”

Investors like Covino and Lee-Wen are redefining returns. The market is shifting toward founders like Schell who build with purpose. Investors who understand that ROH is the new ROI are moving capital to companies solving real world problems. This is the new generation of investors, where profit and purpose are aligned. In this season of thanksgiving, we should give thanks that impact matters more.