Heading for Change Tools

Below you will find our open-source suite of underlying tools, resources and other frameworks to support investors, philanthropists, intermediaries and other actors in understanding what and how it looks to deploy capital at the climate and gender finance nexus.

The Heading for Change Investment Toolkit & Guidance is the culmination of two years of brainstorming, building, iterating, and investing. It builds off foundational tools and frameworks in climate, gender and broader systemic investing approaches.

These flexible and customizable tools helped us to construct our portfolio of 18 private market climate funds. They have been created to guide investment decisions, and also empower a growing community of investors, advisors, and changemakers to build and execute an integrated climate and gender investment strategy.  While each investor will approach this work with their own values, priorities and constraints, the toolkit is designed to support a confident transition from intention to action.

At a Glance:

  • Investment Guide - a step-by-step guide to climate and gender investing in private markets

  • Climate and Gender DDQ - a due diligence questionnaire assessing how funds integrate climate and gender considerations

  • Scorecard Tool - a screening and due diligence- supportive scorecard used to evaluate funds against key investment metrics and criteria

  • Portfolio Construction Tool - a tool that helps investors design target portfolios based on key criteria and track progress as the portfolio evolves over time

  • Heading for Change’s Investment Criteria - a shared set of defining principles, concepts and guardrails that mirror the specificities of the investment strategy.

  • Investment Climate Gender Platform - a digital platform with a growing opportunity set of private market climate and gender funds

This toolkit is designed for a wide range of users, whether you are working at the climate-gender nexus or just beginning your journey.

It supports high-net-worth individuals and family offices seeking to deploy capital at this intersection, institutional allocators integrating a climate and gender strategy into their investment mandates, and advisors or intermediaries helping clients apply an integrated lens to their portfolios. It is also for anyone simply curious about how to move climate capital in a more inclusive way.

We hope it serves as a springboard for deeper engagement, more rigorous due diligence, and more inclusive investment.

Step into action

Getting Started

If you are ready to start implementing an integrated climate and gender investing strategy and need more context on the how, check out:

Our step-by-step Investment Guide to help you start thinking about your investment thesis and the strategy you are exploring.

  • Review section 3 of the Insights Report to give you a good flavour for implementing a climate and gender investing strategy (including an overall analytical framework, and actionable case studies).

  • If you are looking to integrate questions to ask in your investment process, take a look at this Impact Alpha article and page 59 of our Insights Report.

Going Deeper

If you’re actively investing capital at the climate-gender nexus and looking for to refine your practices or deepen implementation, have a look at these areas:

  • Strategy & Thesis

    • Review our Investment Criteria and underpinning Strategy to help you refine and build your own.

    • As you build your portfolio from scratch, or expand/ redesign the focus of an existing one, this Portfolio Construction tool can help define core parameters, articulate strategic priorities and help investors track alignment over time as the portfolio evolves.

  • Pipeline & Opportunities

    • Find a curated selection of climate and gender investment opportunities on the Invest Climate Gender platform

    • Connect with trusted networks and mission-aligned investor communities (e.g  Toniic, Prime Coalition, AVPN, Gratitude Railroad etc) to identify opportunities and access collaborative support throughout due diligence and decision-making.

  • Due Diligence

    • For evaluating how—and how well—climate and gender are being integrated into investment strategies and processes, check out the Investment Scorecard. It can be used to score investments, compare deals during screening or built upon as part of a broader evaluation process.

    • If you’re looking for  a set of questions that can help unpack the commitment to and intentionality regarding climate and gender, how the thesis comes to life at this nexus, and how the integration of these lenses has informed the processes and practices through which value and impact are created, then the Climate & Gender Integration Due Diligence Questionnaire (DDQ) is for you.

Curious

If you are early in climate and gender investing journey, and are curious about what this means in practice:

If you’d like to join us in catalyzing solutions at the forefront of climate innovation and gender, and learning how to design a portfolio at this intersection, consider becoming a Donor-Partner.

Participate