As we have stated throughout this book, impact investing is simply good, sound investment practice augmented with an impact lens—namely, consideration of how your capital may be invested with an eye toward various levels of financial return together with the generation of different types of social and environmental impact.

My expectation is as you approach the execution of your impact investing strategy you will follow a few key practices:

I also hope after you've taken the time to read the good words of those who contributed to this book, you will read other books on both impact investing and traditional investing practices, absorb the information in some of the papers you'll find on the various resource pages we list at the end of this book and become knowledgeable yourself about these strategies before you decide to invest for impact. This is what I tell the families I advise and this is how Mia and I try to approach our own investing.

That said, some folks will enter this discussion ready to act now—to invest today with whatever amount of capital you feel appropriate and learn about impact investing by actually doing impact investing. If that is true of you, then you might consider engaging in some “test cases.” What I mean by that is to put your toe in the water with a smaller amount of capital to see how it goes, see how your assumptions play out and learn about the practice of impact investing through participating in a more limited way with options that could give you a chance to learn through doing. If you're working without a formal advisor to help guide your process, should you “bet the farm” on strategies you are still learning about and at a time when you're still exploring the overall field of impact investing? Of course not!