Turner Impact Launches $1B School Fund

LOS ANGELES—Turner Impact Capital has launched the Turner-Agassi Charter School Facilities Fund II to invest up to $1 billion in charter school development nationwide. The fund plans to build 130 charter schools for best-in-class operators by 2020. This is an evolution in Turner’s social-impact investment model, which simultaneously produces investor returns—as much as 12%—while promoting and motivating positive social change.

Bobby Turner, CEO of Turner Impact Capital, expects the fund to hit $400 million in commitments by late November 2015. The remaining $600 million of the $1 billion fund will be secured through construction debt. “We’ve already had our first closing with more than $150 million, and we expect to close out the fund by the end of November,” Turner tells GlobeSt.com. “We are also incredibly excited to announce that we have partnered with Merrill Lynch to offer up to $100 million of the fund to clients of their private banking platform. It is exciting for us because it is an opportunity to enable individual investors, not just institutional investors, and high net worth individuals to be a socially impactful investor.”