THE IMPACT BAKERY
Welcome to The Impact Bakery! This is for people in the impact ecosystem who are tired of buzzwords that sound good but explain nothing.
This newsletter exists because we needed it.
We’ve spent years building, failing, and learning in this ecosystem. But we kept seeing the same gap: thousands of reports and panels, very little honest conversation and a whole lot of jargon.
Enter: The Impact Bakery.
Here we’ll try to break things down, share usable frameworks, surface half-baked ideas, and question assumptions.
This isn’t a place for perfection. We’re building in public and learning as we go.
Think of it as a bakery, not a blueprint: some ideas half-baked, some burnt, some surprisingly good once you add a little butter.
If you care about impact and you’re willing to question it, put on your apron and let’s get baking!
Half Baked Ideas
🍞 Still rising. Don’t @ us yet.
Here’s something curious.
While building our Impact Glossary in English and Spanish, we noticed something strange. Some terms feel like they don’t translate well into Spanish.
And even if there is a direct translation, a lot of them just aren’t used. Or they sound… kind of weird.
Take embedded integration.
In Spanish it would be something like integración integrada, which is basically the same word twice. Is it useful? Not really.
So we just end up using the word in English.
And it’s not just one term. There are a lot of concepts in the impact space where the Spanish exists on paper, but in practice, the English word wins (hello Greenwashing).
This made us go into a rabbit hole and spend way too much time thinking about this: If we talk so much about localized impact, why does the language still feel so centralized?
We don’t have an answer. Just curiosity.
Is language a proxy for power in the impact ecosystem?
Are we missing a vocabulary that exists and isn’t mainstream?
Does it matter or are we two millennials overthinking yet another thing?
Still half-baked. Would love your thoughts.
Bakers of the Month
📊 The Mexican Climate-tech company we’re all watching
Nature-based solutions can feel like a buzzword. But Toroto is doing something that actually aligns with what most of us are chasing: systems-change.
They’re aligning incentives by turning nature into a financial asset that pays locals to protect it rather than destroy it.
🥐 What they do (bite-sized):
Toroto partners with local communities (ejidos) in Mexico to restore forests and protect 255,000 hectares of land. That’s about 1.5X the size of Mexico City.
This makes the environment a valuable asset and main source of income for the people living there.
🥣 Their Secret Sauce
Vertical Integration.
Most companies in this space are just middlemen. Toroto has main character energy, they handle everything:
Scientists in the Wild: Their own scientists live at 12 field stations. They do the work on the ground rather than using satellite images.
Spy Tech for Trees: They use lasers that map the forest in 3D and AI to prove how much carbon is being sucked out of the air.
🍰 Why it’s Tasty
Economic Power.
Local landowners are the main earners. Keeping a forest standing becomes more profitable than clearing it.
🧑🍳 The Bakers
Toroto was co founded by Santiago Espinosa de los Monteros (CEO), David Camhi, Pilar Harispuru, and Rocío Harispuru.
They recently closed a funding round led by elea Foundation, a philanthropic impact investor with a very interesting model.
Takeout
🤓 Resources: Events and Funding Opportunities in 2026
If you like to plan ahead (or avoid missing the good stuff), this one’s for you:
Curated by Aunnie Patton Power. A solid overview of what’s happening across the impact investing world, all in one place. Useful if you’re deciding where to show up this year.
Put together by Akhila Kosaraju. A focused list of climate-related events worth tracking if you work around adaptation, mitigation, or nature-based solutions.
In December, Dr. Stefanie Gripne crowdsourced a massive list of climate and equity funds to help a capital steward allocate $5M in 2026. Check out her original post for the full conversation and her curated list of investors (in the comments) to see who is leading the field.
As we said before, we're building as we go, and we would LOVE for you to bake with us.
Feel free to answer to this email with what you’d like to see next (our next items on the menu include systemic change and additionality).
Also, if you enjoyed this newsletter, share it with someone who might want to have a bite or reply and tell us what you liked.
¡Buen provecho! Your trusted bakers,
