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PADM-GP 2311

IMPACT INVESTING

Fall 2025

Syllabus

Course Prerequisites

Financial Management, CORE-GP.1021 is a co-requisite for this course for NYU Wagner MPA-PNP students. Students from other programs or schools who have not taken a direct equivalent of Financial Management are requested to contact the instructor for approval prior to registration

Course Description

This course provides an introduction to impact investing as a field – its evolution, players, and tools – focusing on the opportunities and challenges for investors to drive impact via their investment decisions. Through a combination of readings, case studies, lectures, class discussions, and projects, students will gain insights into the perspective of the impact investor and will consider how that perspective relates to other stakeholders.

The course seeks to teach the “what” and the “how” of impact investing, as well as to provide students with the analytical tools to evaluate impact investments critically.

By the end of the course, you will have developed a thorough familiarity with the ecosystem and practices of impact investing, an understanding of its technical aspects, and an appreciation of its potential and limitations. As you learn about impact investing in this course, you are encouraged to keep an open mind, combined with a critical eye.

Course Format

This course is designed for your self-study of the theoretical material as introduced in the readings. Class time will be used for a combination of lecture, class discussion, and hands-on activities.

The readings have been carefully selected to give a grounding that will enable all students to follow along in class and participate meaningfully. Doing the readings and reflecting on them before class is critical to achieving the learning outcomes. Students should expect to be called upon to participate during class to discuss various aspects of the readings.

Some sessions will center around a case, using the case method, which is a helpful way of wrestling with real-world examples and drawing out broader conclusions from a specific instance. Again, it is essential that you come to class having read thoroughly and thought about the case in advance.

Most weeks you will be either assigned a short memo, given a discussion prompt, or be asked to complete at home exercises (either individual or as group work) that were started in class. Memos are short deep dives into a topic or reading. Discussion prompts ask you to share your own thinking on a topic via a corresponding forum on Brightspace; students are also encouraged to comment on each other’s posts. A core goal of the memos is for you to assess whether you are becoming familiar with the relevant topic and to further hone your analytical abilities with respect to a specific challenge in the field of impact investing. A core goal of the discussion questions is for you to start forming an informed opinion on a particular topic and to confront it with the perspectives of your fellow students. Both the memos and the prompts will give you an opportunity to show your critical thinking, informed by the materials, lectures, and in-class activities; they are not meant to simply test your knowledge of the topics covered.

Course Learning Objectives

Required Readings

The majority of the required readings are provided for each week in Brightspace under the corresponding class session, either as PDFs or hyperlinks.

Note that, inevitably, the precise assigned readings will change as the semester progresses. Take the readings listed under each class session in this syllabus as indicative; what is posted in Brightspace counts as the final version.

The two assigned cases (Root Capital and Bridges Ventures) are available for purchase in a required Case Pack by Harvard Business Publishing.

Occasional news articles covering current developments, chiefly from Impact Alpha (daily online publication, free through NYU) or Impact Entrepreneur (free six-month subscription here with your NYU email and using the discount code “NYU6MonthFree”).

Optional Readings

■ The Little Book of Impact Investing: Aligning Profit and Purpose to Change the World, Priya Parrish [easy read, including audio version – highly recommended]

■ Adventure Finance: How to Create a Funding Journey, Aunnie Patton Power [while somewhat technical at times, it contains a helpful glossary at the end covering necessary terminology – highly recommended]

■ Impact: Reshaping Capitalism to Drive Real Change, Sir Ronald Cohen

■ Social Finance, edited by Alex Nicholls, Rob Paton, and Jed Emerson

■ The Power of Impact Investing, Putting Markets to Work for Profit and Global Good, Judith Rodin and Margot Brandenburg

■ Scaling Impact: Finance and Investment for a Better World, Kusisami Hornberger

■ Measuring and Improving Social Impacts, Marc Epstein and Kristi Yuthas

Other Recommended Resources

■ GIIN Sizing the Impact Investing Market 2024

■ IFC Growing Impact: New Insights into the Practice of Impact Investing

■ RPA: Impact Investing Handbook: An Implementation Guide for Practitioners [excerpts from this resource will be assigned as class readings]

You may want to seek out additional resources that line up with your degree of familiarity with underlying investment concepts. At times, something as simple as Investopedia entries will be sufficient. There are also plenty of free Coursera topics that will enhance your understanding. Feel free to reach out to the Instructor or Course Assistant for guidance.

Course Assignments and Evaluation

You will have to complete a variety of assignments and participate in class. Your grade will be based on your performance, as follows:

■ Memos and Homework Assignments - 25%

■ Active Class Participation - 20% (live in-class participation and Discussion Posts)

■ Midterm Exam - 25%

■ Final Project - 30%

Memos and Homework Assignments

Short memo questions will be assigned throughout the semester. Other graded homework includes the completion of an in-class exercise (either individually or as a group). All assignment prompts will be posted in Brightspace. Below is a general rubric for how these assignments will be graded:

Class Participation

You are required to attend each class on time, prepared, and fully present. Unexcused absences, including absences that have not been communicated in advance, will negatively impact your grade.

We all benefit from high student engagement and participation. Active class participation means that you contribute meaningfully to the class discussion. You are expected to do so voluntarily but you may also be called on to participate at any time. For grading purposes, participation will be measured by the quantity and quality of your contributions in class that show that you are prepared, curious, and engaged with the materials, as well as your participation in group work and in the Discussion Forum.

You are fully encouraged to disagree civilly with the Instructor and with your classmates; after all, a lot of learning happens through the exchange of perspectives. Needless to say, all your contributions in class must be rooted in the knowledge that you have acquired to date and the materials that have been assigned.

Midterm Exam