Grantmaking and Impact Investing Are Teammates on the Same Field, Just Playing Different Positions
With the World Cup underway, I've had a sports analogy on my mind, and it turned out to be a useful way to make sense of what I saw across two conferences this year.
I attended the Mission Investors Exchange (MIE) conference in Atlanta, which brings together foundations focused on impact investing, and the Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO) conference in Boston, which brings together foundations focused on grantmaking. GEO was my first time attending, and I loved it. The openness, the quality of conversations, and the intentional focus on learning and connection stood out immediately. Growing up near Boston made it even better, including getting to enjoy some legitimately good lobster again (still not something you can replicate in Fort Worth, TX). If you work at a foundation and haven't been, it's worth making space for.
Both are foundation ecosystems with the same DNA, supporting mission-driven institutions trying to improve outcomes in society. Sitting in both rooms back to back made something clear: grantmaking and impact investing are often treated as separate disciplines, but they look more like different positions on one team. And the thing standing between them isn't a lack of measurement. It's a lack of coordination.
Same field, different positions - but impact measurement connects everything
At MIE, the conversation centered on impact investing. Think PRIs, MRIs, portfolio strategy, and how capital markets can align with mission. At GEO, it centered on grantmaking, with lots of discussion about funding relationships, trust with grantees, and learning and evaluation systems.
Different tools, same underlying question: how does a foundation move resources in a way that actually creates meaningful impact?
Increasingly, one concept sits between these two positions: impact measurement.
Not just reporting, but the connective system that lets different parts of a foundation understand what's happening and adjust. It's the midfield. It's what allows grantmaking insights and investment decisions to actually connect. Without it, everything fragments. With it, coordination becomes possible.
Same problems, different vocabulary
Across both conferences, the same challenges kept appearing in different language:
- Portfolio support vs. capacity building
- Impact measurement vs. learning and evaluation
- Decision-useful data vs. strengthening relationships
Same intent underneath: improve outcomes by understanding what's actually happening.
Other shared themes showed up too. Aligning stakeholders around outcomes. Reducing reporting burden without losing accountability. Turning data into decisions rather than documentation. Building feedback loops that reflect real experience.
Even AI showed up similarly. There was marginally less hype, and the conversations focused more on where it actually helps versus where human judgment still matters.
The real question across both conferences wasn't "should we measure impact?" It was "how do we measure it in a way that helps the system perform better together?"
What grantmaking makes especially clear
GEO reinforced something simple: grantmaking is fundamentally a trust-based system. Not abstract trust, but practical trust built through relationships and how information flows.
Some of the most grounded conversations were about:
- Ensuring local expertise leads place-based work
- Creating shared spaces instead of one-directional reporting
- Balancing advocacy with direct funding in uncertain environments
- Thinking of foundations as ecosystem actors, not just funders
These weren't theoretical debates. They were design choices about how the system actually works. And while trust is central, measurement still matters, more as learning and communication than as control.
What impact investing makes especially clear
MIE reflects a different operating environment, with foundations engaging capital markets where standardization, portfolio thinking, and performance discipline are more explicit.
Common focus areas:
- Structured impact measurement
- Scaling what works
- Decision-useful data
- Portfolio optimization
But even here, the same constraint shows up: you can only optimize what you can see, and what you can see depends on trust and feedback loops. That's where grantmaking becomes essential, not separate, but foundational to making the investing system legible. Without trust, measurement breaks. Without measurement, coordination doesn't scale.
Most foundations still run these as two systems
Most foundations still run grantmaking and impact investing as parallel systems rather than one integrated strategy. That leads to siloed learning, disconnected data, and coordination that happens only by exception. It's a missed opportunity, both operationally and in impact.
The gap is coordination, not measurement
We don't have a measurement problem. We have a coordination problem.
There's already plenty of measurement in the system. The issue is that it doesn't consistently connect across capital types in a way that drives shared action. So even when teams are looking at the same reality, they often interpret it separately. That's where fragmentation starts.
Final reflection
After GEO and MIE, I keep coming back to the same idea. Grantmaking and impact investing are teammates on the same field, playing different positions, with impact measurement as the connective tissue between them.
Right now, that connective layer still feels under-built relative to the complexity of the work. The opportunity isn't to blur the differences. It's to strengthen the connections so the system actually functions like a team.
Because communities don't experience capital in categories, they experience whether the system is coordinated enough to move the ball forward.
That coordination layer, the shared measurement system that lets grantmaking and investing learn from each other, is exactly the problem we work on at UpMetrics.
Not as a reporting requirement, but as the connective tissue that helps different areas of a foundation's impact strategy move together as one. If your team is thinking about what that could look like, we'd love to compare notes.
And maybe the real question underneath all of this is simple. It's not whether we have the right players. It's whether we've finally learned how to play together.
