Climate Venture Capital Fund recognised as Best Impact Investor and for the Best New Ethical and Impact Investment Fund
On 18 June, at the Maritime Room on Auckland’s Princes Wharf, Mindful Money handed out its sixth annual Ethical and Impact Investing Awards. These are the recognised benchmark for ethical and impact investing in Aotearoa, and Climate Venture Capital Fund came away with two of them.
CVCF 2 won Best New Ethical and Impact Investment Fund 2026. CVCF was also named joint winner of Best Impact Investor, alongside Soul Capital’s Te Pae ki te Rangi.
We’re proud of both. They take our tally at these awards to ten recognitions, including highly commendeds. It’s a record we don’t take for granted, because the bar at these awards is set high.
What the judges saw
The two awards point at the two things we care most about.
The Best Impact Investor category is for funds that invest intentionally for positive impact as well as financial return. In recognising Climate Fund, the judges pointed to a portfolio delivering well-documented impact through emissions reduced and avoided, in companies with the opportunity to scale globally. That last part is particularly important to us. The climate problem is a global one, and the returns follow the companies that can solve it at global scale.
They also noted the breadth of investors backing the fund: philanthropists, KiwiSaver and institutional money, private investors, and AIP visa migrants building a future in New Zealand. Climate capital in Aotearoa has moved well beyond a niche. It is becoming a real asset class, drawing from across the investor spectrum.
The Best New Ethical and Impact Investment Fund award recognised Climate Fund 2, the second fund in our series. Standing up a second climate fund is hard, and the judges credited the innovations we’ve built into it and its role in helping investee companies commercialise climate solutions at scale.
Why this fits the way we invest
We’ve never treated impact and returns as a trade-off. The companies tackling energy, water, waste and food challenges are solving problems that industries and governments will pay to solve at scale. The impact is not a constraint bolted onto the investment case. It is the investment case. Awards like these are useful because the judges look past the marketing and test whether the impact is real, measured, and built into the returns.
It’s also a good moment to acknowledge the wider field. Joint-winning Best Impact Investor with Soul Capital, and sharing the night with funds like Pathfinder, BayTrust and Australian Ethical, shows that the ethical investing community in this part of the world is deepening. A stronger field makes everyone’s work more credible and channels more capital toward the outcomes that matter.
Most of the credit belongs to the founders and companies we invest in. The recognition is for a portfolio of companies doing the hard work of building climate technology that competes on commercial terms.
CVCF 2 is open to wholesale investors
CVCF 2 is open now and closing later this year. It is available to wholesale (eligible) investors only.
If you’d like to understand the strategy, the portfolio, and the terms, including the current Product Disclosure Statement and eligibility requirements, visit climatevcfund.com or get in touch with the team. We’d be glad to take you through it.
Climate Venture Capital Fund is managed by 2040 Ventures. This article is general information only and is not financial advice or an offer of financial products. CVCF 2 is available to wholesale (eligible) investors only.
