[ahzhou]

I’ve never understood ESG funds.

1) It’s hard to reliably turn ESG goals into fair (non-gameable) portfolio metrics to incentivize funds

2) LPs still want funds to make returns, so even if they define good metrics, they still want most of the incentive to be based on returns.

3) ESG companies don’t post better returns than those from other asset classes.

It makes more sense for LPs put their money into non-ESG funds and just set aside some amount to achieve ESG goals through a charity with established metrics. They’ll get a tax break to boot.

[jrochkind1]

i think your thinking is not too dissimilar to Tariq Fancy's.

The additional twist, of course, is that if you pretend you're doing ESG, you might attract investors to your fund that otherwise would have gone to another fund... while actually supporting the ESG goals a lot _less_ than if you just donated money to them as you suggest, while also conveying the idea that profit-oriented investing can motivate corporate behavior toward ESG goals instead of requiring government policy, which is yet another win if you actually don't want to sacrifice any profit for ESG goals and don't want any government regulation, so.... "everyone" wins?