I became a tech founder at twenty and survived the dot-com crash at twenty-six. By the time the great recession hit, I'd learned to recognize market storms before they made landfall. When crypto winter arrived, I'll admit to feeling smug — another fad meeting its predictable end.

But what's happening now in impact investing catches me off guard. Not because I didn't see resistance coming, but because this time, the chill runs deeper than market mechanics. My business partner Ushir Shah, a Rockefeller Capital veteran, calls it the "impact winter." He's right — but not for the reasons you might think.

When growth meets backlash

The numbers should warm us: The GIIN's latest survey shows impact assets under management grew 11 percent this past year, sustaining a 21 percent compound annual growth rate over six years to reach $1.571 trillion globally. Capital keeps flowing. Deals still close.

Yet across the US, impact investors open threatening letters from attorneys general. DEI programs vanish from corporate strategies. ESG — once boardroom gospel — becomes a phrase whispered carefully, if at all. Nonprofits watch donations slow to a trickle. The movement that felt inevitable now feels embattled.

What we're experiencing isn't economic winter but ideological frost — a coordinated backlash designed to test whether impact investing's roots run deep enough to survive its own success.

The architecture of a chill

In 2021, when I co-founded Known Holdings with Jim Casselberry and others — a majority-BIPOC financial institution built to deploy capital for maximum impact — the momentum felt unstoppable. Impact investing had evolved from niche to necessity, from marginal to mainstream. Perhaps that mainstreaming itself triggered the backlash.

The impact investing that survives this season won't just be larger — it will be more honest about its limitations, clearer about its methods, and more sophisticated in its politics.

The pattern is familiar to students of social change: Progress breeds resistance. The same political forces dismantling DEI initiatives now target sustainable finance. Anti-ESG legislation proliferates across state capitals. Lawsuits multiply. The message is clear: retreat to profit-only thinking or face consequences.

But here's what the architects of this winter don't understand: Harsh seasons reveal which growth is cosmetic and which has roots. The superficial withers. The essential adapts.

Four principles for navigation

Through conversations with peers navigating this freeze — from community development finance institutions to global asset managers — patterns emerge. Not prescriptions, but principles for those determined to persist:

1. Resilience through solidarity — The Swiss watch industry offers instruction. When Asian competition nearly destroyed centuries-old houses in the 1970s, rivals merged resources, shared research, and survived through collaboration. Impact investing remains fragmented — thousands of sub-scale actors operating in isolation. Strategic partnerships, responsible consolidation, and shared infrastructure aren't just efficient; they're existential.
2. Strength through transparency — Every leader I've spoken with this year carries similar burdens: funder fatigue, regulatory pressure, team burnout. Yet each thinks their struggle is unique, suffering in professional silence. This performative strength weakens us all. Admitting challenge isn't capitulation — it's the first step toward systemic solutions. The field needs a culture of honest impact disclosures that acknowledge setbacks alongside successes.
3. Unity through plurality — Impact investing has always been a broad church: public market activists voting proxies, place-based lenders supporting communities, venture capitalists backing clean tech, philanthropists deploying catalytic first-loss capital. The winter tempts us toward purity tests — arguing about who's "real" impact versus impact-washing. This is precisely the wrong moment for internecine warfare. Diverse methods united by shared values create ecosystem resilience.
4. Courage through discernment — Pressure creates strange bedfellows. Suddenly, actors who scorned impact now offer partnership — if we just soften our stance, dilute our metrics, quiet our advocacy. But inclusion doesn't mean abandoning integrity. Knowing the difference between constructive disagreement and destructive sabotage has never been more critical. We can engage diverse perspectives without inviting those who would dismantle our foundations.

The deeper pattern

My co-founder Jim Casselberry reminds me that we once drove without seatbelts and thought nothing of it. "Someday," he says, "we'll look back on profit-only finance the same way — as an dangerous anachronism we can't believe we tolerated."

He's identifying something profound: We're not just experiencing market cycles or political pendulums. We're witnessing the friction that occurs when an old system confronts its successor. The resistance is proportional to the threat we pose to business as usual.

The ferocity of the backlash paradoxically validates our premise. You don't mobilize attorneys general against irrelevant movements. You don't legislate against failed experiments. The impact winter arrived precisely because impact investing started working — redirecting capital, shifting norms, proving that finance can serve justice.

From survival to transformation

Winters aren't endings; they're how ecosystems regenerate. The dormancy forces examination: Which initiatives were performance, and which were principle? Which partnerships were convenient, and which are essential? Which metrics measured activity versus actual change?

This reckoning, however painful, strengthens what emerges. The impact investing that survives this season won't just be larger — it will be more honest about its limitations, clearer about its methods, and more sophisticated in its politics.

The ferocity of the backlash paradoxically validates our premise.

The question isn't whether impact investing survives. It's whether we use this winter to evolve from a movement defined by good intentions into one defined by systemic transformation — whether we move from adding impact considerations to existing finance toward reimagining finance itself.

The temperature will rise again — these cycles always turn. When it does, will we have used the cold to go deeper, build stronger foundations, and prepare for the next phase of growth? Or will we have wasted the winter wishing for spring?

I believe we're choosing depth. Every day, I watch impact investors refuse to retreat despite pressure. I see fund managers protecting racial equity mandates despite legal threats. I witness LPs maintaining conviction despite political costs.

This isn't the impact winter's victory. It's the warmth that will end it.