2020 Grunin Prize
The Grunin Center administers the Grunin Prize for Law and Social Entrepreneurship to celebrate the contributions of lawyers who purposefully engage in advancing the fields of social entrepreneurship, impact investing, and sustainable development.
The Grunin Center for Law and Social Entrepreneurship is made possible through a generous endowment from NYU School of Law graduates Jay Grunin ’67 and Linda Kalmanowitz Grunin ’67, and the Grunin Foundation. Jay and Linda have dedicated their philanthropic endeavors to investing in innovative projects that have measurable impacts creating meaningful, transformative change.
Grunin Prize Winner
Goldstein Hall - Joint Ownership Entity (JOE)
Legal Team
David A. Goldstein, Managing Partner, Jason Labate, Senior Associate, Gabriel Gerbi, Special Counsel, and Ryan Thompson, Special Counsel.
The Project
The joint ownership entity or “JOE” is a nonprofit membership organization that owns and asset manages a portfolio of affordable multifamily properties. The JOE is a new model for preserving long-term affordability of housing and allowing mission-driven community development corporations (CDCs) to achieve scale through increased financial stability, improved operational efficiencies, and reduced expenses.
Grunin Prize Finalists
Learn more about the finalists below:
- Herbert Smith Freehills - Big Exchange
Legal TeamNick Pantlin, Partner; Clive Cunningham, Partner; Katherine Dillon, Of Counsel; Hayley Brady, Partner; Casey Dalton, Partner; Rich Woods, Senior Associate; Rebecca Perlman, Senior Associate; Annabelle Smith, Associate; Katie McGrory, Associate; Matteo Yoon, Associate; Lucy Curran, Associate.
The Project
The Big Exchange is a ground-breaking digital social impact market place which aims to revolutionize access to financial services, including for 1.5 million unbanked citizens in the UK, and allow anyone with savings or pensions to invest in social impact opportunities that generate a financial return and positive social and environmental outcomes.
Client Team
Jill Jackson, Nigel Kershaw OBE, and Cameron Bourne.
- Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe - Columbia Pulp Project
Legal TeamDoug Goe, Partner and lead bond counsel; Scott Schickli, Tax Of Counsel, bond counsel team; Greg Blonde, Partner, bond counsel team; Les Krusen, Managing Associate, bond counsel team; Richard Chirls, Tax Partner, bond counsel team; Larry Sobel, Tax Partner, bond counsel team; Chas Cardall, Tax Partner, bond counsel team; Zach Finley, Partner, Real Estate; Dustin Calkins, Partner, Real Estate; Nicholas Alexsovich, Senior Associate, Real Estate; and Ronny Clausner, Managing Associate, Real Estate.
The Project
The project will be part of a sustainable economy used to turn what’s left over in wheat fields into packaging materials and other useful products. In addition, this pulp mill will save more trees and use less water than traditional pulp mills with the implementation of newly developed technology, as well as bring much needed economic development to an underdeveloped region of Washington State.
- The Nature Conservancy & Cleary Gottlieb - Cumberland Forest Project
Legal TeamThe Nature Conservancy: Stephen Valdes-Robles, Senior Attorney; Daniel Guy, Senior Attorney; and George Barlow, Senior Attorney.
Cleary Gottlieb: Daniel Reynolds, Partner; David Stewart Fisher, Senior Attorney; Joshua Frankel, Senior Attorney; and Boris Rappoport, Associate.
The Project
The 253,000-acre Cumberland Forest Project uses an innovative private equity-type structure to protect sweeping forest landscapes in a globally significant biodiversity hotspot. With a blended capital structure, managed by a nonprofit, the project intends to demonstrate that forests can be responsibly managed to generate a return for investors while storing millions of tons of CO2 to mitigate climate change and benefiting water quality, wildlife habitats and local economic opportunity.
- Allen & Overy - Social bonds to support women-led SMEs
Legal TeamDoungporn Prasertsomsuk, Counsel; Panuwat Chaistaporn, Associate; Natthicha Wiriyatornphan, Associate; and Ming Wei Loo, Senior Associate.
The Project
Bank of Ayudhya PLC has launched the first private-sector “gender” bonds aimed at supporting women-led small and medium-sized enterprises (WSMEs) in Thailand. This inaugural social bond issuance will help to expand credit lines to WSMEs and promote transparency and integrity in Asia’s growing social bond market.
- Morrison Foerster - CIVIC Carried Interest Model I
Legal Team
Sean Byrne, Of Counsel; Suz Mac Cormac, Partner; and Jesse M. Finfrock, Associate.
The Project
The innovation of Buckhill Capital and Morrison & Foerster is the Carried Interest by Verified Impact Calculations (CIVIC). The CIVIC is a set of provisions that can be imported into the relevant documents of most any venture capital or private equity fund so that this carried interest is paid out to a fund manager only to the extent that the fund achieves quantified, verifiable impact metrics agreed upon by the fund manager and the fund’s investors. This has the potential to create billions of dollars of incentives for institutional investment managers of all kinds to pursue impact goals alongside financial returns.
2020 Judging Panel
- Navjeet K. Bal
- Deborah K. Burand
- Ed Diener
- Jay Grunin
- Ginger Lew
- Trevor Morrison
- Helen Scott