We’ve seen the word ‘unprecedented’ used a lot to describe this year. It’s true and not true at the same time. Racial injustice has been at the forefront of our national conversations for decades. Presidential elections happen every four years without fail. Perhaps ‘unprecedented’ is more about describing the unique overwhelming, fear, and strain of not knowing the outcome of these narratives as they converged into a single season.

For many of us whose work is to align values and mission with investments and strategies (what we refer to as having a one-pocket mindset), ‘unprecedented’ holds a slightly different meaning. What is ‘unprecedented’ for us is the growth in the tension between meeting the immediate needs of our community, and the recognition that the events of this year are merely symptomatic of much deeper issues.

We at Access Ventures believe that we can effectively hold and mitigate that tension. After all, at a smaller scale, we’ve been doing so for years now. 2020 represented an opportunity for us to prove our mission at scale. We believe that duality can be achieved across impact issues and focus areas. Our one-pocket mindset is an integrated approach across all asset classes and programs and is uniquely equipped to both feed and house local families while also making headway on the global climate crisis. Even as challenges continued to unfold throughout the year, we were able to lean in and create real short-term impact combined with long-term change.

We dispel the notion that one cannot generate competitive financial returns while pursuing mission-driven investing. We have worked hard over the years to consciously construct a dynamic investment portfolio to achieve both impact and our custom financial benchmark returns and are proud that 91% of our assets are invested in ESG and impact investments that reflect our values across asset classes and geographies. The remaining assets include cash and other ‘impact-neutral’ assets.

“2020 represented an opportunity for us to prove our mission at scale.”

As we look back at 2020, we chose to highlight the areas that we felt best exemplified the tension of short and long-term work. We are proud of the work of our team, portfolio companies and partners and hope that this report would share a small taste of the outcomes we are working to achieve. Throughout this work, our one-pocket mission statement and vision-guided everything we accomplished.