EcoVadis and Novata form new partnership to deliver high-precision, primary Carbon Data integration for corporate and investor decarbonization. Jul 30, 2026, 08:00 ET The collaboration embeds verified EcoVadis supplier data into Novata's sustainability management platform, further expanding the EcoVadis Carbon Data Network to advance Scope 3 transparency and satisfy intense regulatory and investor scrutiny. PARIS and NEW YORK, July 30, 2026 /PRNewswire/ - EcoVadis, the global standard for resilient, sustainable supply chains, and Novata, a leading sustainability management platform for private markets, today announced a new partnership. The collaboration creates a seamless data-to-insight pipeline by embedding verified EcoVadis supplier primary carbon metrics directly into Novata's secure platform. This announcement marks the latest milestone in EcoVadis' mission to build the market's most interconnected Carbon Data Network (CDN), a rapidly expanding ecosystem designed to accelerate Scope 3 transparency and reporting by linking high-quality primary data with leading carbon accounting and sustainability platforms. "Building a truly resilient and transparent global supply chain requires deep interoperability across the climate tech ecosystem," said Dexter Galvin, SVP Climate at EcoVadis. "By welcoming Novata to our rapidly expanding Carbon Data Network, we are making it easier than ever for corporations and financial institutions to shift from spend-based estimates to precise primary data. This integration empowers users with the trusted data engine needed to calculate reliable Scope 3 footprints and drive real, measurable decarbonization." This partnership also leverages the strength of the recently published EcoVadis Carbon Data Reliability Level(TM)(DRL) Framework - rooted in EcoVadis methodology and powered by its Carbon Data Network - to restore trust and reliability in corporate carbon emissions reporting. Through this integration, investment firms and corporate clients can effortlessly route primary supplier emissions data directly into Novata's data management space. By providing high-quality supplier data and carbon maturity analytics drawn directly from the supply chain footprint, EcoVadis serves as the primary data engine. In turn, Novata's carbon solution ingests this primary data, enabling mutual users to move past high-level sector averages and calculate highly accurate Scope 3.1 footprints, drawing granular insights by location and activity type, and allowing organizations to execute data-backed decarbonization strategies capable of satisfying strict investor and regulatory demands. "To effectively navigate today's rigorous regulatory environment and meet investor expectations, businesses need granular, verifiable data," said Conor O'Laoire, Head of Global Partnerships at Novata. "Partnering with EcoVadis allows us to securely ingest verified primary carbon metrics directly into Novata's platform. This integration gives our clients the clarity they need to move beyond industry averages, gain precise visibility into their supply chains, and execute highly targeted sustainability strategies." With this announcement, Novata joins other leading platforms within the EcoVadis Carbon Data Network to close the critical Scope 3 data gap, transforming compliance requirements into an actionable catalyst for business value and global carbon reduction. ABOUT ECOVADIS EcoVadis is a purpose-led business embedding sustainability intelligence into decisions across global supply chains. Its ratings, risk, carbon, e-learning, and worker voice solutions equip organizations to understand supplier performance, manage regulatory and operational risk, drive greenhouse gas emissions reductions, and build more resilient value chains. In 2024, EcoVadis acquired Ulula, a specialized worker voice platform, expanding its capabilities for human rights due diligence and direct worker insight. More than 175,000 businesses across 250 industries and 185 countries use EcoVadis, including Johnson & Johnson, L'Oréal, Unilever, Bridgestone, BASF, and JPMorgan. ABOUT NOVATA Novata's solutions make it easy for organizations to achieve their sustainability goals and create value. Our trusted sustainability management platform and advisory practice empowers organizations to automate data collection and reporting, streamline carbon accounting, simplify regulations, benchmark performance, and monitor risk. Backed by the Ford Foundation, Hamilton Lane, Microsoft, Motive Partners, Omidyar Network, Northern Trust and S&P Global, Novata is majority controlled by mission-driven organizations and its employees, and is a B-Corp-certified public benefit corporation. SOURCE EcoVadis

Demos: when data fuels democracy. 30 July 2026 * Ford Foundation Economic justice and democracy are deeply connected systems. When people have secure jobs, income, and access to education, they're better positioned to engage in civic life. And when they can participate in democracy, they have the power to protect those conditions. For 25 years, Demos, a nonprofit public policy organization and Ford grantee, has understood this intertwined relationship and worked to build a just, inclusive, multiracial democracy and economy. The organization produces rigorous, data-driven research and policy solutions that help citizens participate fully in the decisions that shape their lives. Here, Taifa Smith Butler, President of Demos, discusses how its research and analysis help grassroots partners secure economic opportunities that result in lasting, systemic change. See how leaders are safeguarding the rule of law. To protect Democracy and Rule of Law, Ford Foundation highlights efforts to support the local officials and advocates who ensure every American vote is counted. Between policy and daily life. Its job at Demos starts with making the connection between policy and everyday life visible. It's not useful to talk about a policy or a bill in theoretical terms. The Ford Foundation has to explain how it will impact everyday people and why they should care. Because when millions of people's voices aren't heard in its democracy, what's to stop lawmakers from setting aside worker protections? From allowing corporations to keep wages low and put workers in unsafe conditions? Its task at Demos is to help people see how the chain of consequences from voting to legislation lands on their doorsteps. Co-Designed tools for democracy. Research alone doesn't create change. The Ford Foundation prioritize producing tools and knowledge products - like reports, toolkits, fact sheets, and more - in partnership with grassroots and state-based organizations that are more tightly connected to impacted communities. They know what their communities care about, what the problems are, and more often than not, what the solutions are too. As a national organization, its job is to listen as much as The Ford Foundation talk. The Ford Foundation is in continual communication with partners throughout the process of creating any product, to make sure what The Ford Foundation produce reflects their experiences and fits their needs, both in content and in format. The Ford Foundation also work with them to figure out how to share that information, whether it's with lawmakers, other advocates, or their own members. The Ford Foundation also connect partners with each other through regular convenings where they can share what's working, build on each other's strategies, and form new collaborations. Its goal is to craft the tools together that will help achieve lasting, shared impact. In search of Missing Voters. For the last three years, The Ford Foundation has partnered with one state-based organization each year to produce the Missing Voters report. These reports look at the number of people in a state who aren't registered to vote or are registered but don't cast a ballot. Its approach has not been about voter apathy or individual behavior. Instead, The Ford Foundation has looked at the very real structural and systemic barriers that prevent people from making it to the polls. The reports have also helped partners grow their volunteer base and raise additional funds. Furthering inclusive, nonpartisan processes. Partisanship builds power that is fleeting. It relies on temporary advantages that can harm the long-term democratic health of its country. It's a race to the bottom that ultimately makes its democracy less and less representative and drowns out the voice of everyday people. Louisiana offers a sobering example. After the Supreme Court decided Louisiana v. Callais, the state canceled an active election, invalidated 45,000 ballots to redraw a congressional map, get rid of Black-majority districts, and further partisan goals. When partisan interests take precedence, the rule of law erodes. The Ford Foundation is not interested in policies that give any party an advantage over another. When The Ford Foundation choose projects, The Ford Foundation ask: Will this advance policy solutions that generate economic mobility and security for all? Will these interventions create an inclusive electorate and a representative, accountable government - particularly for Black and Brown voters who have historically and systemically been excluded from democratic processes? That is the core of Demos' approach: a fierce belief in a bold vision for a just and inclusive multiracial democracy. 27 April 2026 18 March 2026

Ford Foundation's Roy Swan makes the case for 'positive-sum' capitalism. The Ford Foundation's Roy Swan begins his new book with a compelling anecdote. Carrying the ball as a high school tailback, he leaped into the end zone for a touchdown, only to catch his foot and land smack on the crown of his head. Doctors told his family his smashed vertebrae meant he might be paralyzed for life. "It was the best thing that ever happened to me," Swan says on the latest Agents of Impact podcast. Experimental techniques and an innovative surgeon allowed him to make a full recovery, and even to run track six months later. And the injury steered him away from football and ultimately to a career in finance, including as co-head of global sustainable finance at Morgan Stanley and now as head of mission investing at Ford Foundation, where he oversees a $1.3 billion carveout from Ford's endowment for mission-related investments. "It changed my whole life, put me on a different path, opened up a whole new world," he says. Swan uses the incident to make a broader point that conventional wisdom is often wrong. "We are operating under collective illusions," he says. The main target for his myth-busting in "Positive Sum: How Zero Sum Thinking Broke Capitalism - and How We Can Fix It," out today, is the deeply ingrained belief that every gain requires someone else's loss. Impact investors have long argued - and in many cases proven - that financial returns and positive social impact can reinforce one another. Swan wants to share the good news more widely. "A lot of people are afraid, particularly investors," says Swan on the latest Agents of Impact podcast. "They think that if you're going to have social impact, you're going to lose something. That's just not true." Swan's mission investing team invests in affordable housing, financial inclusion, responsible technology, healthcare and quality jobs, while targeting returns sufficient to preserve its endowment and distribute its required yearly grants (full disclosure: through a program-related investment, Ford Foundation is an investor in ImpactAlpha). "We have to generate a pretty high long-term financial return," Swan says. "So far, so good for us. We've exceeded our expected return and our financial hurdle rate." Unconventional wisdom. Swan argues that two of capitalism's most influential thinkers, Adam Smith and Milton Friedman, have long been misunderstood. Both, he says, emphasized moral and social responsibility far more than most modern interpretations appreciate. He is one of the few investors who has read not only Smith's "Wealth of Nations," but his earlier, "The Theory of Moral Sentiments." "If you understand the whole story," Swan says, "you then understand that Adam Smith saw a form of capitalism that required morals and ethics in order to have a healthy economic system." Likewise, Swan argues, Friedman's famous 1970 essay in The New York Times asserting that the social responsibility of business is to increase profits has been stripped of critical context. Friedman also insisted businesses operate within the "rules of the game," - including paying taxes, following regulations and maintaining healthy relationships with workers and communities. For Swan, these historical reinterpretations reinforce his broader point: capitalism functions best when value creation is shared rather than extractive. Swan is careful to craft an argument that rests on economics, not moral suasion. For example, he points to Gallup research estimating trillions of dollars in lost global productivity from disengaged employees, along with MIT professor Zeynep Ton's work demonstrating that companies investing in better jobs consistently outperform peers across market cycles. Ford is an anchor investor in Nine Dean, a holding company built around the thesis that high-quality jobs are a driver of value-creation. Swan also highlights KKR's employee ownership initiatives under Pete Stavros (who co-wrote the book's introduction with Darren Walker, who recently completed his stint as the foundation's president) as evidence that broad-based ownership and stronger workplace cultures can drive competitive advantage. "What better way to advance human welfare than to advance the quality of life of every working person?" he says. The Great Illumination. In the book, Swan argues that the growing ability to measure corporate externalities - the costs and benefits businesses create beyond their financial statements is ushering in what he calls The Great Illumination. Advances in data, sensors, artificial intelligence and new analytical tools are making those impacts increasingly visible and actionable. Accounting for externalities would wipe out more than half of all corporate earnings, according to some estimates. Many firms would operate at a loss. "One of the great things about quantifying externalities in currency terms is you can no longer hide the actual cost that all of us are paying," he explains. Swan advocates for more rigorous measurement of both positive and negative externalities that investors can incorporate into traditional financial analysis. Better information means markets can price risks and opportunities more accurately. Ford, for example, has invested in Richmond Global Sciences, co-founded by Harvard Business School professor George Serafeim, along with Sakis Kotsantonis and Peter Kellner, which quantifies the externalities in currency terms (see, "Weighting accounts for impact"). "Now you can apply the probability ratings of social media companies being more highly regulated or having to internalize some of the costs of the damage they're creating or being taxed," he says. "We like to focus on as much as you can quantify with a healthy dose of common sense." Challenge for philanthropy. Swan reserves some of his sharpest criticism for philanthropy itself. When he was leaving Morgan Stanley to join the foundation, a colleague pointed out that he was going to an institution where the investment office was completely separate from the program team. "I still find it shocking to some extent," he says. Walker did manage, in 2017, to carve out $1 billion from Ford's then-$12 billion (now $17.5 billion) endowment for mission-related investments, and asked Swan to lead the effort. Despite the evidence that mission-related investments can generate competitive returns, relatively few foundations have followed Ford's lead in aligning more of their endowments with their charitable missions. Swan attributes much of that hesitation to institutional inertia rather than investment fundamentals. "There are a lot of incentives in place that discourage people from trying something new," Swan says. "It's better to fail conventionally than to take the chance of succeeding unconventionally." The book weaves Swan's own journey with enjoyable lessons on economics and illuminating reporting, for example, on the late Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell's 1971 memorandum that mobilized corporate America to defend free enterprise through legal and political action. He tells the story of the commission, on which he served, that established the Church of England's £100 million "Fund for Healing, Repair and Justice," to address the church's historic ties to the South Sea Company and the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Swan hopes "Positive Sum" broadens the conversation beyond impact investing. All proceeds from the book will go to the Ford Foundation to support its charitable mission. "The goal is to have fun with history, to have fun with psychology and economics," Swan says. "And hopefully to convince folks that you actually can do well and do good." Get Agents of Impact and all of ImpactAlpha's podcasts in your feed by subscribing on Apple, Spotify or YouTube.