Building scale in community impact investing through nonfinancial performance measurement

The measurement of nonfinancial performance is becoming increasingly important in the community impact investing industry, where individuals and institutions actively deploy capital in low-income domestic markets for both financial and social returns. Quality data ensure that the creation of jobs, construction of community facilities, financing of affordable housing, and other benefits that characterize the sector are delivered cost-effectively and transparently. This paper discusses the limited practice and future direction of nonfinancial performance measurement by revisiting four key questions: ; 1. Does nonfinancial performance measurement really matter for investors? ; 2. If it does matter, is nonfinancial performance measurement even possible? ; 3. If nonfinancial performance is possible to measure, what form should it take? ; 4. How will nonfinancial performance measurement increase community impact investing? ; The paper examines the barriers to a more robust regime of nonfinancial performance measurement and posits both that innovation in the sector ought to be driven by the discrete but explicit needs and demands of investors, and that greater accountability has a special role to play in making disclosure more attractive. The report concludes that nonfinancial performance measurement directly informs the investment process and is essential to growing community impact investing because it provides latent sources of capital with market-level information on the tradeoffs between financial and social return. Although the industry is unlikely to discover the “silver bullet” of nonfinancial performance measurement in the near future, there is reason to be hopeful: measurement strategies can – and will – converge through private- and public-sector innovation.Community development

Expression profiling of familial breast cancers demonstrates higher expression of FGFR2 in BRCA2-associated tumors

BackgroundBRCA1- and BRCA2-associated tumors appear to have distinct molecular signatures. BRCA1-associated tumors are predominantly basal-like cancers, whereas BRCA2-associated tumors have a predominant luminal-like phenotype. These two molecular signatures reflect in part the two cell types found in the terminal duct lobular unit of the breast. To elucidate novel genes involved in these two spectra of breast tumorigenesis we performed global gene expression analysis on breast tumors from germline BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutation carriers. Methodology Breast tumor RNAs from 7 BRCA1 and 6 BRCA2 mutation carriers were profiled using UHN human 19K cDNA microarrays. Supervised univariate analyses were conducted to identify genes differentially expressed between BRCA1 and BRCA2-associated tumors. Selected discriminatory genes were validated using real time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction in the tumor RNAs, and/or by immunohistochemistry (IHC) or by in situ hybridization (ISH) on tissue microarrays (TMAs) containing an independent set of 58 BRCA1 and 64 BRCA2-associated tumors. Results Genes more highly expressed in BRCA1-associated tumors included stathmin, osteopontin, TGFβ2 and Jagged 1 in addition to genes previously identified as characteristic of basal-like breast cancers. BRCA2-associated cancers were characterized by the higher relative expression of FGF1 and FGFR2. FGFR2 protein was also more highly expressed in BRCA2-associated cancers (P = 0.004). SignificanceBRCA1-associated tumours demonstrated increased expression of component genes of the Notch and TGFβ pathways whereas the higher expression of FGFR2 and FGF1 in BRCA2-associated cancers suggests the existence of an autocrine stimulatory loop