Commonfund has launched its second impact fund, Environmental Solutions 2, two sources familiar with the matter have told New Private Markets. It is a multi-strategy fund with buckets for private equity fund investments, direct and co-investments, secondaries and real assets, the sources said. For the secondaries sleeve, Commonfund is interested in GP-led transactions, continuation funds and LP stakes.

The fund has a $350 million target and sits within the environmental solutions group of CF Private Equity, Commonfund’s pooled fund management business. The environmental solutions group is led by Ethan Levine.

Commonfund declined to comment for this story.

It is the successor to CF Environmental Sustainability Partners 2020, which closed short of its $250 million target in 2022 with $233 million. CF ESP 2020 is nearly fully invested or committed, one of the sources told NPM. This is also a multi-strategy fund: approximately 50 percent has been allocated to co-investments and direct investments; 15-20 percent to secondaries, 15-20 percent to primary PE fund investments and 10-15 percent to real assets.

ESP 2 will invest in themes including climate change mitigation, environmental preservation, reducing waste and resource usage, resource efficiency, food, agriculture, water and renewables.

Secondaries strategies are a growing part of the impact investing universe. Blue Earth Capital, the European impact firm, has just launched an emerging markets fund with a similar multi-strategy mandate: it has capacity to make primary fund, secondaries, direct and co-investments.

The secondaries sleeve for this fund is a draw for LPs new to impact investing, Nicolas Muller, Blue Earth’s head of funds and co-investments, told NPM last month: it means Blue Earth can provide visibility on real, current investment opportunities and redistribute capital to LPs much sooner. This can give new LPs evidence of their investment’s financial and impact performance earlier on in the fund’s life.

Other notable secondaries impact fund managers include North Sky Capital, which brought its first dedicated impact secondaries vehicle to market in 2013; the firm is now marketing its sixth Clean Growth fund within this strategy.