What is Institution Diffusion

Little scholarly research has systematically examined impact investing in the nonprofit realm. In the overview, the paper presents a case study of a U.S.-based private foundation that has transformed itself from a grant-maker to an impact investor, and the associated challenges of institutional entrepreneurial motivations, successful strategy for institutional adaptation, and the ensuing lessons for the field of impacting investing. The paper has two main objectives: to identify the motivation and enabling environment for such strategic change, and to analyze the issues and changes of the managerial model when evolving from traditional grant-making to impact investing. We argue that organizations that are mission-driven, entrepreneurial in spirit and structure, with embedded business/philanthropy principles acting as a source of change in the institutional field. However, it faces technical and legitimacy problems resulting from the new practice's lack of institutional saturation in the field.