2024 Impact Tear Sheet – SJF Ventures

Our 2024 Impact

Every year, we ask our active portfolio companies to complete our Annual Impact Survey. We believe impact reporting should be a collaborative process, with input from all stakeholders — including Limited Partners, our portfolio companies, and their beneficiaries. Our 2024 impact data is the result of a comprehensive survey and analysis of the environmental and social impacts of the firm’s active portfolio companies. This year, we had 28 companies report data, which was an 87.5% response rate and a big improvement on previous years.

Changes in Our 2024 Reporting

In 2024, we made significant adjustments to our annual survey. When we reviewed the 2023 data and shared it with portfolio companies, we realized that not all of our survey questions had previously led to actionable takeaways. We want our impact data to be useful, informing our own work and providing insights to our portfolio companies. In order to improve the effectiveness of our impact survey, we took the time this year to review each question and make adjustments where necessary.

Every question we ask should have a purpose that stands to deliver value to SJF or to the portfolio.

That was the lens through which we reviewed our survey from top to bottom. For each question, we asked: what would we do with this data? Is this valuable to SJF? Is it valuable to the portfolio company? What conversations would we have with the company if it was under-performing on this metric? Can we learn from companies by asking about leading practices to be proactive rather than reactive?

The impact survey data gives us an opportunity to engage with portfolio companies when we spot areas for improvement. While we know we can continue to improve, this year’s data collection process will hopefully lead to much more actionable insights and ultimately, conversations with and resources for portfolio companies.

Measuring Job Quality

From our inception in 1999, SJF has backed businesses that empower people — particularly those historically marginalized. Creating quality job opportunities in healthy, diverse, and ethical workforce environments can generate deep societal impact.

Employees

and 13,864 jobs created since the time of SJF's initial investment

The average employee response rate was 77% among reporting companies. Engagement surveys are an important tool for improving employee experience and retention.

This is higher than the average for industries like tech (29%) but lower than the average across all US companies (47%).

Benefits and Professional Development

Among reporting companies, 46% offer "wellness" benefits to employees, 89% offering retirement benefits, and 96% offer remote or flexible work.

Benefits like these increase skills, promote career advancement, and can create higher earning potential for employees.

However, only 52% have defined career paths and ladders, indicating an area of growth across the portfolio to improve employee retention and development.

Ethical Governance

This includes ethical AI policies, advisory boards, terms of use, and more.

and 71% are SOC 2 certified, indicating strong practices to protect employee and customer data rights.

and 93% of companies reporting also have an employee handbook. Both are important documents to set norms around ethical behavior and practices in the workplace. Even for startups, these policies can help shape company norms early on.

Impact Highlights

SJF’s portfolio companies report on product-specific impact indicators. Below are highlights from 2024!

Social Determinants of Health (SDoH) refer to the non-medical factors that influence health outcomes, including factors like housing, transportation, food security, and more.

By using ClimaCell instead of EPS, temperpack customers avoided the creation of more than 102,591,346 lbs of CO2e last year - as Temperpack says in their impact report, that’s like planting 760,000 trees and letting them grow for 10 years according to data from the EPA.

Reducing toxic noise, abuse, and spam creates safer online spaces at a time when social media companies are rolling back content moderation and digital safety practices.

In a 60 Decibels study, 84%+ of Schoolinks users indicated their students’ awareness of career pathways and interests had increased.

In study conducted by 60 decibels last year, 74% of graduates say their confidence in themselves and their abilities increased and 83% of graduates report they learned skills that help them find better employment opportunities.

In a study with 60 Decibels, ~25% of respondents indicated savings from PosiGen help them spend on food and household necessities.

About SJF Ventures

Sustainable Jobs Fund was formed in 1999. Our original name set out the impacts we still pursue today—a clean, resilient environment and equitable opportunities. Though our strategy has expanded over our 25+ years of experience, we remain committed to these fundamental themes. Since SJF’s founding, we have helped 86 portfolio companies to scale their impact.

For more on SJF’s impacts, visit our impact page.