Thought leadership. Inspiration. Impact.

A series of powerful forces are changing business as we know it. From the speed of communication to information accessibility, all lead to increased transparency and a more systemic perspective. Whether we choose to brand the resulting evolutions as Shared Value, Conscious Capitalism, Institutional Logic, Benefit Corporations, Triple Bottom Line, SRI, ESG, or Regenerative Capitalism, Builders sees all as having the same foundation and aims to represent growth stage private equity as part of the vanguard of this evolving movement. We will remain deeply engaged in the thinking driving this high-potential market. Here is some of the content which has been inspiring us lately.

The Next Generation of Capitalism Has Evolved: Catch Up Before You’re Left Behind

Written by Tripp Baird

The Cultural Shift Transforming Business as We Know It

Written by Tripp Baird

300 Sustainable Solutions To Turn Global Challenges Into Business Opportunities

Written by Ben Schiller

The Engine of Purpose That Drives Successful Companies

Written by Vishal Vasishth

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Inspired Impact: Tripp Baird with Builders Fund

Written by By Inspired Impact

Managing partner Tripp Baird was interviewed by Inspired Impact, which features purpose-driven leaders and social entrepreneurs who are making a meaningful impact in their communities, industries, and around the world....

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Disrupting Fast Food: What if Every Fast-Casual Restaurant Acted Like This One?

Written by By Tripp Baird

The time is ripe for a restaurant industry disruption—actually, one is already afoot. Fast-growth, incredibly popular chains with kale salads and fresh-pressed juices are popping up in cities across the...

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Investors Play an Important Role in Businesses' Achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals

Written by By Mike Dutton

Businesses—and the investors who fund and support them—have an important role to play in addressing global-scale issues, such as climate change and wealth disparity. We at Builders Fund have chosen...

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7 Ways Investors Can Build a More Sustainable Financial System

Written by Tripp Baird

Since the Business Roundtable announced its “new” description of the purpose of business—to be for all stakeholders instead of solely for shareholders—many organizations that have long been operating under a...

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Building an Impact Fund One B Corporation at a Time

Written by Tripp Baird

Impact investing is no small game — more than $500 billion annually according to the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN). But not all impact investors follow the same guiding principles....

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Anytime Fitness’ Parent Company Acquires The Bar Method

Written by Club Industry Staff

Self Esteem Brands, the parent company of Anytime Fitness, Woodbury, Minnesota, has acquired The Bar Method for an undisclosed sum, according to a release from Self Esteem Brands. The Bar...

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Traditional Medicinals weaves purpose into every corner of its business plan

Written by Bill Giebler

The work Traditional Medicinals does is multifaceted and has been since 1974 when Sadler and Rosemary Gladstar founded the company and pioneered the wellness tea category. The then-couple—he a social...

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Real food. Irresistibly delicious.

Written by Leslie Silverglide | Co-founder & CEO

We’re proud to play a big role in creating lasting change for environmental sustainability in restaurants, but we believe we can push boundaries even further. This is the approach we...

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Purpose At Work: How Traditional Medicinals Powerfully Combines Purpose And Profit

Written by Simon Mainwaring

Today’s leading brands are combining purpose and profit to earn consumer loyalty, goodwill and growth as conscious shoppers prefer to support companies that share their beliefs.

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How Traditional Medicinals Found Aligned Investors With A Private Liquid Market

Written by B the Change

Throughout Traditional Medicinals’ more than 40-year history, the tea company had never taken an outside investment other than from friends and family. By 2016, most of the business was still...

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Just Good Business: An Investor’s Guide to B Corps

Written by The Yale Center for Business and the Environment,Patagonia, Inc., and Caprock

Description: Two movements for conscientious business, impact investing and B Corps, both began just a dozen years ago—and have grown rapidly. From the start, both shared a commitment to long-term,...

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Traditional Medicinals 2017 Sustainability Report

Written by Traditional Medicinals

Traditional Medicinals is not just in the business of tea; they are in the business of change—changing lives, changing standards and changing the quality of herbal remedies.

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Here's how plant-based food business Urban Remedy is plotting its next growth spurt

Written by Katie Burke

The biggest source of growth for the plant-based brand has been its kiosks, which can be found in 30 Whole Foods Market locations across the state and have now been...

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General Mills' VC Arm Leads $17M Investment in the Plant-Based Food Company Urban Remedy

Written by Jenna Broughton

Urban Remedy, a plant-based organic food and beverage company, has closed $17 million in Series B funding led by 301 INC, the investment arm of General Mills. This brings the...

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Hear From 2 Funds Proving Their Impact Theses

Written by B the Change

The real impact achieved by investing in mission-aligned, purpose-first companies is seen most clearly in the work of those companies. But the fund manager’s strategy and values play a leading...

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Debunking the myth that impact investing is all about "good people but bad deals"

Written by Tripp Baird

Since 2007 when the term “Impact Investing” was coined, the concept has risen in visibility and – fueled by the coming of age of the Millennial Generation, the retirement of...

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Success Through Community: Traditional Medicinals Found Aligned Investor by Seeking Shared Values

Written by B the Change

The maturing ecosystem around mission-aligned capital is growing the connections between impact businesses and impact investors. That was the case for The Builders’ Fund investment in Traditional Medicinals earlier this...

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Sustainable Investing | Establishing Long-Term Value and Performance

Written by Mark Fulton, Bruce M. Kahn, Ph.D., Camilla Sharples

The evidence is compelling: Sustainable Investing can be a clear win for investors and for companies. However, many SRI fund managers, who have tended to use exclusionary screens, have historically...

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The Non-Paradox Of Highly Successful Profit-From-Purpose Businesses

Written by Aaron Hurst

VCs still have questions about impact businesses, but the businesses are showing more and more that they have answers.

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Saving the Planet from Ecological Disaster Is a $12 Trillion Opportunity

Written by John Elkington

How can we create $12 trillion a year in market opportunities by 2030? How about by meeting the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals? The goals, a set of 17 stretch goals...

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The Builders Fund Completes Minority Investment in Traditional Medicinals

Written by AccessWire

The Builders Fund, a private equity fund that invests in high-growth, purpose-driven businesses that generate both social/environmental benefit and attractive financial returns (“Builders”), today announced that it has made a...

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Builders Fund invests in Traditional Medicinals, closes on $30 mln

Written by Chris Witkowsky

The Builders Fund made a minority investment in Traditional Medicinals, which sells wellness tea in the U.S. Builders Fund, which brings an ESG focus to its investments, also announced it...

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The Soul of a Corporation

Written by Timothy Egan

We know from an infamous Supreme Court ruling that corporations are people. They may be heartless, like the pharmaceutical company that jacks up the price of a lifesaving drug. Or...

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The Engine of Purpose That Drives Successful Companies

Written by Vishal Vasishth

Inside the healthy tensions that fueled us at Patagonia, and what entrepreneurs can learn as they themselves build for the long term.

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Trump Energizes Impact Investors

Written by Carol J. Clouse

Impact investors like Liesel Pritzker Simmons are a passionate bunch, who care about social and environmental issues and believe their investments should reflect that. So what happens when that conviction...

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300 Sustainable Solutions To Turn Global Challenges Into Business Opportunities

Written by Ben Schiller

The Global Opportunity Explorer connects businesses to cutting-edge ideas for solving the world’s problems—and the big profits that come with those solutions.

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Purpose Drives Performance

Written by Aaron Hurst

Science tells us purpose-oriented people take on harder challenges, stay longer with their employers, and become leaders. Why aren’t we designing more systems to support them?

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The Cultural Shift Transforming Business as We Know It

Written by Tripp Baird

As consumers become more globally aware, tech-savvy, and well-informed, companies will have to do better to thrive.

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The Next Generation of Capitalism Has Evolved: Catch Up Before You’re Left Behind

Written by Tripp Baird

Humanity today is confronting unprecedented and systemic social and environmental challenges—natural resource degradation, an obesity/chronic disease crisis, climate change, a lack of access to affordable education, to name a few....

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5 Myths Socially Conscious Entrepreneurs Need to Ignore

Written by Tripp Baird

A series of powerful forces are changing business as we know it. From the speed of communication to information accessibility, all lead to increased transparency and a more global perspective

...

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The Case for Letting Business Solve Social Problems

Written by Michael Porter

Why do we turn to nonprofits, NGOs and governments to solve society’s biggest problems? Michael Porter admits he’s biased, as a business school professor, but he wants you to hear...

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Innovating for Shared Value

Written by Marc W. Pfitzer, Valerie Bockstette, Mike Stamp

Companies that deliver both social benefit and business value rely on five mutually reinforcing elements.

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The Necessary Revolution

Written by Peter Senge, Bryan Smith, Nina Kruschwitz, Joe Laur and Sara Schley

The Earth faces grave sustainability problems, including global warming. In this new book, experts Peter Senge, Bryan Smith, Nina Kruschwitz, Joe Laur and Sara Schley discuss how people, organizations and...

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The Deloitte Millennial Innovation Survey

Written by Alex Edmans

Deloitte’s Millennial Survey revealed that our world’s future leaders are increasingly viewing business through the lens of social impact.

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Regenerative Capitalism: How Universal Principles And Patterns Will Shape Our New Economy

Written by John Fullerton

Over the last two years, Capital Institute has been working with many of these thought leaders and entrepreneurs in a quest to understand what a theoretical framework for regenerative economies...

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Literature review: seminal papers on ‘Shared value’

Written by Richard Williams & Janet Hayes

This paper identifies seminal papers on the concept of shared value and the framework in which it is thought of by the business community. The literature obtained predominantly focuses on...

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The Link Between Job Satisfaction and Firm Value, With Implications for Corporate Social Responsibility

Written by Alex Edmans

How are job satisfaction and firm value linked? I tackle this long-standing management question using a new methodology from finance. I study the effect on firm-level value, rather than employee-level...

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Post-2015 Millennium Development Goals: What role for business?

Written by Paula Lucci

There appears to be increasing consensus that the private sector has to be more involved than last time in the design and/or implementation of any new development goals, particularly as...

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Corporate Social Responsibility and Access to Finance

Written by Beiting Cheng; Ioannis Ioannou; Georgios Serafeim

In this paper, we investigate whether superior performance on corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategies leads to better access to finance. We hypothesize that better access to finance can be attributed...

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CSR vs. CSV - What’s the difference?

Written by Mark Kramer

We believe that CSR is a different—if overlapping—concept from creating shared value. Corporate social responsibility is widely perceived as a cost center, not a profit center. In contrast, shared value...

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Amo La Vida

Written by Nic Askew

In this black-and-white interview, filmmaker Nic Askew interviews Julio Olalla. It is not an interview to sell anything or pitch anything. Its just Julio being Julio. He candidly speaks about...

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The Business Logic of Sustainability

Written by Ray Anderson

At his carpet company, Ray Anderson has increased sales and doubled profits while turning the traditional “take / make / waste” industrial system on its head. In a gentle, understated...

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Putting the Service-Profit Chain to Work

Written by James L. Heskett, Thomas O. Jones, Gary W. Loveman, W. Earl Sasser, Jr., Leonard A. Schlesinger

This article sets out a simple, elegant, and ultimately tough-minded way to build profitability in a service business. Originally published in 1994, it offers as much today as it did...

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Does the Stock Market Fully Value Intangibles? Employee Satisfaction and Equity Prices

Written by Alex Edmans

This paper analyzes the relationship between employee satisfaction and long-run stock returns. A value-weighted portfolio of the “100 Best Companies to Work For in America” earned an annual four-factor alpha...

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Natural Capitalism

Written by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, L. Hunter Lovins

For decades, environmentalists have been warning that human economic activity is exceeding the planet’s limits. Of course we keep pushing those limits back with clever new technologies; yet living systems...

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