Gates Foundation in Seattle | Photo credit: AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson
Greetings Agents of Impact!
In today’s Brief:
Bill Gates calls the question on philanthropic perpetuity
Liberty Mutual's disability-lens investment
Unlocking capital for African women and refugees
Measuring financial inclusion outcomes
Featured: Giving While Living
Impermanence is the future: Four unsolicited ideas for sunsetting the Gates Foundation. Tens of billions of dollars have been frozen or cut from government spending on health, housing, climate, global development and humanitarian assistance. Just when philanthropy should be stepping up, many foundations are in retreat, resetting their priorities and attempting to stave off political threats. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, for example, quietly axed its support for housing and economic inclusion in the San Francisco Bay Area, where tech companies like Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta have pushed up costs. Jeffrey Skollhas been criticized for not distancing himself from an administration that has decimated funding for social issues the Skoll Foundation has long championed. Into this leadership breach has stepped Bill Gates, who has decried the global health cuts and taken aim at fellow billionaire Elon Musk, who spent a weekend “feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” and boasted about it. “The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one,” Gatestoldthe Financial Times. This month the Gates Foundation, the world’s largest philanthropy, announced it would double its giving, distribute around $200 billion, and sunset the organization by 2045, decades ahead of schedule.
Gates’ announcement was cheered by the small cohort of foundations that have embraced time-limited approaches and challenged philanthropy’s default assumption of perpetuity. “As climate catastrophe looms and communities suffer, a new generation of wealth holders and philanthropic leaders are confronting an uncomfortable truth: What purpose does perpetuity serve if the very problems we exist to solve are rapidly outpacing our willingness to deploy resources?” Santhosh Ramdoss of Gary Community Ventures writes in a guest post on ImpactAlpha. The Colorado grantmaking organization plans to transfer all of its assets to its community’s balance sheet and sunset by 2035. “This watershed moment represents more than just another foundation choosing impermanence,” Ramdoss says. “It signals a fundamental reconsideration of philanthropy's purpose in our rapidly changing world.”
Act of creation. In The Wall Street Journal in 2002, ImpactAlpha’sDavid Bank explored the “giving while living” philosophy of Chuck Feeney, the donor behind Atlantic Philanthropies, which dissolved in 2020 after deploying $8 billion over 38 years. Other philanthropies in sunset mode include the Levitt, Compton, Stupski, Kataly and Ivey foundations (the UnTours Foundation produced “Dollars that make sense,” a short animation on the topic). From the collective experience of those who have embarked on the journey, Ramdoss extracts four considerations for the Gates Foundation team. For starters, don’t call it “spend down,” he says. “A thoughtful sunset isn't about watching assets dwindle; it's about catalyzing something more powerful than your institution could ever be in perpetuity.” When foundations describe their sunset as a spend-down, he says, “they diminish what should be a transformative act of creation into a mere depletion of resources.”
Reshaping markets. Traditional foundations often separate their philanthropic missions from their investment portfolios. Freed from this constraint, says Ramdoss, Gates can make its massive endowment a catalyst for systemic change. “This means moving beyond conventional impact investing toward transformative capital deployment that reshapes markets and industries aligned with their mission.” That could mean establishing new investment vehicles, taking greater risks on emerging solutions to global challenges, and demonstrating how institutional capital can simultaneously generate returns and drive meaningful change (see ImpactAlpha’s 2016 report on the Gates Foundation, “Making markets work for the poor”). “This moment is not just an opportunity to foster a shift in philanthropy,” says Ramdoss, “it is also a moment to foster change in the way wealth can be a source of greater good and collective prosperity in the world.”
Liberty Mutual partners with Enable Ventures for co-investments in disability tech solutions. Regina Kline, a former disability rights lawyer, co-launched Enable Ventures with Sorenson Impact’s Jim Sorenson three years ago to close the disability wealth gap (see “Agent of Impact”). Enable is raising a $75 million fund to invest in tech-enabled tools designed by and for the roughly 1.7 billion people with disabilities worldwide. Liberty Mutual Investments, the $100 billion investment arm of Liberty Mutual Insurance, will back Enable’s fund and co-invest with the impact investor in disability tech solutions. “We see an increased need for solutions that address this historically underserved and fast-growing market,” said Liberty Mutual’s Ommeed Sathe. “We believe that our position as a flexible, long-term partner can help leading operators and investors like Enable scale across industries and create lasting value.” Enable is also backed by $5 million from UnitedHealth Group.
Inclusive tech. Enable has made a half-dozen disability-led or -focused investments, carving out a specialty in tech solutions for upskilling people with disabilities and assisting them at work. Enable has backedDaivergent’s job training for adults living with disabilities, and Inclusively, a workforce retention startup helping employers gain access to professionals with disabilities. Earlier this year, Enable backedBe My Eyes, a Danish startup that connects blind and low-vision individuals with volunteers for support with everyday tasks.
Impact Ventures PSM Seed backs early cervical cancer detection in Mexico. Early detection is key to defeating cervical cancer, but access to cervical cancer screening is a major challenge in Latin America and other emerging markets. More than 90% of the 350,000 women who died from cervical cancer in 2022 were in low- and middle-income countries. Mexico’s Timser Group, a women-led research lab, has developed a non-invasive test that detects cervical cancer via protein biomarkers in the blood. TIMSER claims the globally-patented screening, called Preventix, is more effective than the traditional Pap test for detecting cervical cancer. “When we started Preventix, we knew we wanted to do things differently: to bring reliable, accessible and dignified technology to thousands of women,” said Timser’s Mercedes Gutierrez Smith.
Women’s health. Impact Ventures PSM Seed is a $5 million impact venture fund that was stood up earlier this year by the impact investment team of Promotora Social México and Impacta VC. The fund’s investment will help Timser expand access to the Preventix test globally, says Gutierrez Smith. “We’re excited to add partners who are not only committed to innovation but also to the impact it can have on people’s lives.” Impact Ventures PSM Seed writes pre-seed and seed checks of up to $300,000 to impact tech startups focused on Latin America.
The Miller Center for Global Impact’s Capital Innovation Fund provided a loan to Flamingoo Foods, a Tanzania-based rice processor and distributor that works with smallholder farmers. (Miller Center)
New York University’s student-led impact investment fund made its sixth investment, in Rolli, a Santa Monica, Calif.-based company that connects journalists with credible sources. (NYU)
Somerville, Mass.-based SparkCharge raised $30 million to provide its mobile charging service for electric vehicle fleet operators. (TechCrunch)
The Emerging Africa and Asia Infrastructure Fund, or EAAIF, secured $325 in debt from Allianz Global Investors, ABSA, Standard Bank, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. and Swedfund to derisk infrastructure projects in Africa and Asia. (EAAIF)
Proof points from Uganda for unlocking capital for women and refugees. A trio of initiatives in Uganda are opening channels of capital for women, refugees and other vulnerable communities long overlooked by the continent’s biggest lenders. The models on display at the Gender-Inclusive Financing Innovation Expo in Kampala last week aim to expand the customer bases of commercial banks and other lenders to improve financial inclusion on the continent. First up: Concessional capital from nonprofit Aceli Africa that is designed to get more banks and financial institutions to lend to farmers and agri-businesses in Uganda, where women make up 77% of the sector’s labor force. Aceli has provided first-loss capital, coaching and incentives to eight lenders to address lending biases that disadvantage women. Its partners have lowered their revenue thresholds and minimum loan sizes, for example, to serve women's businesses, which tend to be smaller than men’s. The work has unlocked $10 for every $1 of incentive and supported more than 1,000 small businesses and 200,000 smallholder farmers, 60% of whom are women.“We are demonstrating that we can change the narrative using incentives and capacity building, and most of our partners are seeing their money generate impact," Aceli’s John Robert Okware told ImpactAlpha.
Catalying commercial capital. The World Bank-funded Generating Growth Opportunities and Productivity for Women Enterprises, or GROW, initiative is encouraging local banks to lend to women and refugees with subsidized loans and grants. Its partner banks, PostBank, Equity Bank, Finance Trust Bank, DFCU Bank, Centenary Bank and Stanbic, offer credit to small consumer goods retailers and wholesalers, poultry and vegetable farmers, agricultural produce exporters, and pre-schools. Lenders charge interest rates of 10% annually – more than 15 percentage points lower than alternative sources of credit.
Refugee-lens investing. UGAFODE Microfinance is addressing lack of access to capital for long-time inhabitants of Nakivale refugee settlement, one of Africa’s oldest refugee camps. It worked directly with Uganda’s central bank to let refugees use their ID numbers as credit bureau references, opening up formal lending channels to undocumented individuals. UGAFODE’s own microfinance operations serve about 10,000 economically active refugees. “There is a risk in lending to refugees,” UGAFODE's Florence Mutonerwa said, “but it is also a business that you can shield with guarantees.”
A blueprint for outcomes-focused financial inclusion. To safeguard the credibility of financial inclusion efforts, stakeholders must prioritize measuring and reporting on the outcomes of products and services, not just their customer reach. In a guest post on ImpactAlpha, Estelle Lahaye and Charley Clarke of CGAP, a global partnership of more than 35 development organizations, outline four critical enablers for aligning capital flows with real impact: context-specific use cases, tech-enabled data collection, integration of outcomes into investment decisions, and greater transparency. They cite impact-first fund manager Global Partnerships, which triangulates outcomes data to manage both positive impacts and risks. “There is no one-size-fits-all approach,” Lahaye and Clarke write. But without a real shift toward outcomes-based reporting, financial inclusion efforts are at risk of impact-washing and loss of trust among customers, funders and the public.
Bethany Wylie, previously with Camber Collective, joins Ballmer Group as a portfolio manager on its national impact team… Dutch impact investor Triple Jump seeks a people and culture strategist and an investment risk manager in Amsterdam… Veris Wealth Partnersis looking for an investment associate in New York… Also in New York, Ownership Workshas an opening for a grants and impact manager.
Sonen Capitalis recruiting an impact associate in San Francisco… Grounded Solutions Networkwins the $100,000 2025 Ivory Prize for Housing Affordability, an award created by Ivory Innovations, the nonprofit academic center at University of Utah’s David Eccles School of Business… Convergence Blended Financewill launch its 2025 "State of blended finance" report today at 9am ET/6am PT.
