Author: Robert Rubinstein

The Global Voice of ESG & Impact Investing

Most Movies Lose Money. Donors Should Fund Them Instead

"Most independent films lose money—so why are top impact investors pouring millions into them anyway? Today, filmmaker and impact producer Rosser Goodman joins TBLI Radical Truth to reveal the economics of impact entertainment: why cultural ROI can outweigh box office returns, and what investors need to know before writing a check."
In this episode of TBLI Radical Truth, we sit down with filmmaker and producer Rosser Goodman to explore the intersection of film financing, cultural return on investment, and impact media. Discover how independent storytelling shapes public consciousness, creates social change, and offers a different kind of value for forward-thinking investors.
Rosser Goodman is a director and producer and the founder of TANŌ RISING FILM. She directed the features Holding Trevor and Love or Whatever, founded Circle Content with offices on the Paramount Studios lot, and received the Millennia Scope Entertainment Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. She is a member of the Producers Guild of America and the Television Academy.

📌 Key Moments in This Episode: 00:00 - The Economics of Independent Film 03:45 - Why Traditional Film Financing Fails Creatives 11:20 - Measuring Cultural ROI vs. Box Office Revenue 19:15 - How Impact Investors Can Enter the Entertainment Space 28:40 - The Future of Independent Storytelling

🔗 Connect with Rosser Goodman: • TANŌ RISING FILM:
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rossergoodman/

ABOUT THE TBLI RADICAL TRUTH PODCAST

Most finance podcasts protect the industry. Radical Truth interrogates it.
I'm Robert Rubinstein. For 30 years TBLI Group has been the world's leading ESG and impact investing network. Every week on this show, one unfiltered conversation with someone actually moving capital toward a liveable future, and no polite silence about the ones only claiming to. No sponsors. No pretending.

TBLI GROUP

This is Radical Truth.

Radical Truth Podcast Link
Radical Truth Youtube Link
 

TBLI subscribers: you're invited to InvestHer Summit 2026 in Paris

Powered by AXA, in Paris on 27–28 October. Meet vetted scaling women founders in person, with Robert Rubinstein among the speakers.

Get 20% off with code TBLI26: https://bit.ly/InvestHerSummit26-Tickets
 

The introduction that changes your year rarely comes from the person you planned to meet.

TBLI Connect: ninety minutes of one to one video conversations. A few minutes each, then the system moves you on. No panels, no slides, no travel.

Across the table: a family office planning its next decade, an impact fund working towards first close, a founder in Nairobi or Lima ready for the right capital. You won’t know who until the screen changes.

Come curious, not with a pitch. A few minutes is enough to learn something and far too little to sell anything.

Register today. Then show up, because someone will be waiting for you.

Ninety minutes. Friday 30 October, 16:00 CET
https://luma.com/21hzg8sq

Secure your spot. Space limited

If you have been before, bring one person who has not.
 

We spend too much time curating our wins and burying our failures. This TBLI Circle event flips that completely.

Bring your most honest story — the career move that blew up, the decision you still cringe at, the moment everything went sideways — and share it in a room full of people who've been there too.

No judgment. No LinkedIn polish. Just real people, real stories, and real lessons.

This is where trust gets built and where real community starts.

Reserve your seat → https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/-Yalb63iSCiv2pdJTfIVTA

The most useful meeting I ever had was with a man who told me, politely, that he did not care

He let me finish. Then he said he had read the material, he did not dispute any of it, and he was not going to do anything about it, because nothing in his own incentives required him to.

I left angry. It took me years to work out that he had given me the most valuable hour of that decade.

Because here is what everybody else did. They agreed.

They agreed in the room. They asked for the deck. They said this is exactly the conversation the industry needs to be having, and a good number of them meant it. Then nothing happened, and because they had agreed, I had no idea why.

Agreement with no consequence is the most expensive thing in this business, and I have been making the same case since 1998, so I have paid for a great deal of it.

What it costs is time, and it costs it in a specific way. An honest no closes a file. A warm yes keeps the file open: a follow-up, a second meeting, an introduction to a colleague who also agrees, a request for a version of the material for the board. Eighteen months later you have a relationship and no allocation.

The man who refused cost me an hour. The ones who agreed cost me quarters, and I went back to them repeatedly, because enthusiasm reads like progress and refusal reads like failure.

Agreement is abundant for the obvious reason. Saying you support this requires no capital, no committee paper, no deviation from the benchmark and no conversation with a consultant. It buys goodwill with everyone present at no cost to the person offering it.

Which is also why so much of it evaporated the moment the mood turned. Nothing had to be withdrawn, because nothing had been committed.

I should be fair about one group, because the warm yes is not always cowardice. Some of those people meant it and could not act, and were not in a position to tell me so. I have more sympathy for them now than I had at the time. The ones I am describing are the people who agreed, could have acted, did not, and never said which it was.

And I handled it badly for a long time. I gave my hours to the people who were pleasant to me rather than to the ones who were honest with me, and I mistook a full diary for a pipeline.

So now I would rather be refused by someone who means it than heard sympathetically by someone who does not. I am aware the industry is built the other way round, because everything we count is a count of interest.

Is an honest refusal genuinely worth more to you than a sympathetic hearing? And is there anything in how you spent last week that suggests you believe that?

Go to trusvc.org if you want to share your experiences.

Over Three Quarters of Companies Increased Investment in Sustainability Over Past Year, Citing Higher ROI: Deloitte Survey

Mark Segal

A significant majority of companies continued to increase their investments in sustainability initiatives over the past year, with investments in sustainability becoming more focused and financially driven, according to a new survey released by global professional services firm Deloitte.

The increased investment comes as companies see significant financial value from their initiatives, with more than three quarters of executives reporting greater ROI from sustainability investments compared with other business investments, while they also apply a sharper business lens, with over half citing financial benefit as the top criteria when assessing potential sustainability initiatives, according to the report.

SEC Drops Investigation into BlackRock, State Street, with a Warning Over Participation in Climate Groups

Mark Segal October 8, 2026

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced on Wednesday that it has decided not to pursue enforcement action into asset managers including BlackRock and State Street, following an investigation into potential regulatory violations through their participation with climate-focused engagement group Climate Action 100+ (CA100+) in voting to replace directors at ExxonMobil in 2021.

While acknowledging that “the investigation did not develop evidence that BlackRock or State Street agreed to vote proxies in certain manners,” the SEC said that it raised “serious concerns about the conduct of CA100 members,” and warned asset managers that coordinated shareholder actions could compromise their status as passive investors and trigger regulatory and disclosure obligations.

Read Full Article 

‘Green bonds aren’t just about saving the planet. They’re about protecting returns,’ says CBI’s Sean Kidney

• By Oliver Balch

October 6 - As climate risks rise and governments, companies and cities search for capital to fund the low-carbon transition, sustainable debt has become one of the fastest-growing segments of global financial markets.
For the third year on the trot, total issuances of green bonds – more technically referred to as GSS+ (green, social, sustainable+ bonds) – exceeded $1 trillion, according to the latest figures from the Climate Bonds Initiative (CBI), a non-profit organisation specialising in how debt markets can support climate action.
A recent 20-year green bond issued by Spain attracted orders worth more than 20 times its 4 billion euros ​target, while a new 12-year Italian green bond was more than 13 times oversubscribed.

The CBI’s co-founder and chief executive, Sean Kidney, has watched the sector’s growth at close quarters for 17 years. “When I started in ‌2009, there were $2 billion of these things called green bonds out there. And now there's over $7 trillion outstanding. So, something's going on, right?”

In his view, the world economy is becoming ever more volatile, and institutional investors are looking for ways to shore up the long-term returns on the assets under their management.

 

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