C3 Grantmaking Fostering Solutions and Infrastructure Project Summaries

The Project: Agora Partnerships, a nonprofit that catalyzes equitable and inclusive businesses across Latin America, will build the productivity and social and environmental sustainability of women-led small and medium enterprises (WSMEs) in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Mexico. Agora will develop a transparent and data-driven Information Exchange Platform (IEP) that will facilitate relationships and transactions between WSMEs and capacity building, market linkage, and finance actors. The platform will collect, verify, and share data across the network of partners to decrease financing and market risks associated with information asymmetry and “opaque” WSME data.

Values and Outcomes: Agora Partnership’s project is confronting an entrenched issue in Latin America – a lack of support for women-led enterprises – in a moment when this type of support is particularly critical to an equitable recovery from COVID-19. The goal is to onboard 1,000+ women-led businesses to its platform over the next few years. Agora plans to incorporate input from WSMEs during design and development, which is an important step in making the project representative and useful for women-led enterprises. Overall, market and financing actors will be able to use WSME’s transactional data housed in the IEP to make better informed gender-equitable decisions.

For more information on Agora Partnerships, visit their website. 

The Project: Village Capital, which provides support to early-stage impact-driven startups, aims to develop, test, and deploy a digital diagnostic tool to help early-stage entrepreneurs determine what kind of financing mechanism is most appropriate for their growth, and connect them to investors who offer that type of financing. Village Capital will leverage its investment-readiness and matching platform, Abaca, to create a tool that allows entrepreneurs and capital providers access to a suite of financing options. The digital diagnostic will engage an array of stakeholders and hopes to have a multiplier effect in increasing access to capital and help develop a lasting infrastructure for alternative financing.

Value and Outcomes: The digital diagnostic will focus on engaging beneficiary communities in the United States, Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America and will be designed to be used by a range of organizations. Village Capital has a large network to share the resource, having the potential to make deep reach and impact. The goal is to simplify and accelerate the process for startups and investors to navigate the spectrum of capital – ultimately influencing the capital system to be more flexible and just, and work better for a diversity of businesses.

For more information on Village Capital, visit their website.

The Project: The Impact Investing Institute (the Institute) is a non-profit focused on making capital markets work better for people and the planet. This project will leverage the transformative potential of catalytic capital to support a Just Transition to net zero carbon emissions and mobilize more institutional capital for low-income communities in the Global South. By supporting participation in the Institute’s Just Transition Finance Challenge, it will help increase the capacity of catalytic capital providers and Global South-based investors to develop and launch financial products that attract institutional capital at scale to achieve an inclusive transition.

Values and Outcomes: The Impact Investing Institute is addressing a critical global issue – the Just Transition. While the concept of a Just Transition is gaining traction among public and private investors, there is a risk that this growing pool of capital will not reach the areas where positive environmental and social impact is most needed. The overall goal is for financing vehicles focused on delivering a Just Transition to be developed faster and to be more attractive to institutional investors through better informed deployment of catalytic capital. The project will center the voices and needs of local actors through increased involvement of asset and fund managers from developing countries—an important step in making Just Transition-focused financial vehicles more inclusive.

For more information on the Impact Investing Institute, visit their website. 

The Project: Invest Appalachia (IA) is a regional blended capital platform designed to accelerate and expand community investment across Central Appalachia. IA provides a large-scale platform to absorb investment from national sources and channels it to existing partnerships on the ground, including community development financial institutions (CDFIs), local foundations, and community development groups. C3 funding will further the development and implementation of IA’s new blended capital design, particularly Invest Appalachia community accountability infrastructure of Investment Committee and Community Advisory Council. IA will track its investments through an ongoing impact framework that assesses system-level changes in each targeted economic sector, and measures the amount of dollars leveraged, businesses served, co-investment partners, and communities impacted. IA will also track impact across its portfolio related to increased equity, community wealth, and sustainability. 

Value and Outcomes: Catalytic capital has a huge role to play in locations like Appalachia that have been historically marginalized, lack investment capital, and would benefit from projects that enable an increased flow of resources. IA’s regional approach brings together multiple investors and partners, drawing on connections to regional funders, local economic development actors and longstanding CDFIs that are already operating in the region. As such, IA’s project has potential to fuel systemic change in a region that has long faced barriers to equitable economic opportunity and sustainable growth.

For more information on Invest Appalachia, visit their website.

The Project: KOIS is a global impact investment and advisory firm that proposes to build the ‘Dignity in Labor’ platform, a multi-stakeholder platform that will leverage catalytic capital & blended finance tools to provide access to affordable credit for unbanked & under-banked customer groups in India. Through this platform, KOIS will bring together a consortium of organizations (service providers, lenders, and donors) that will together develop and deploy systemic financial solutions to accelerate socio-economic mobility for platform users (small businesses, informal workers, and nano and micro-entrepreneurs.). The platform will also enable access to relevant government social security programs for all workers that interact with the facility.

Values and Outcomes: KOIS’ platform is an innovative solution to increase access to affordable credit for economically disadvantaged, unskilled or semi-skilled, informal workers in India. The platform will also enable access to government social security schemes for platform user groups, thus enhancing social and financial inclusion, digitalization, and formalization of labor. The program includes a monitoring and evaluation framework, as well as planned reporting to help expand learning and foster a market-based approach to scale similar financial inclusion initiatives in those emerging markets where most small businesses and blue-collar workforces remain credit unserved or under-served while incentivizing ethical behavior.

For more information on KOIS, visit their website.

The Project: Pacific Community Ventures (PCV), a nonprofit impact investor and community development financial institution (CDFI), will develop and disseminate a new guide for place-based funding that brings together private and public investment, grant support, and community partnerships to spur racial equity and community wealth building. The guide will help CDFIs and impact investors replicate PCV’s Oakland Restorative Loan Fund, a $2.5 million, no fee, low-interest, small business loan fund focused on the lowest income areas in Oakland, particularly those with a large percentage of Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) residing there. The guidebook will pool knowledge and takeaways from PCV’s integrated model and partnership experience to serve as a roadmap for institutions looking to advance racial justice through social finance.

Value and Outcomes: PCV’s project is designed to activate catalytic capital for BIPOC entrepreneurs, who have historically faced barriers to financing.  It draws from a PCV strategy that began as intensive COVID-19 relief and has transitioned to the longer-term work of recovery—a critical approach in communities affected by decades of discrimination and disinvestment.

For more information on Pacific Community Ventures, visit their website.

The Project: The Global Steering Group for Impact Investment (GSG), which works to catalyze a global ecosystem for impact investment and entrepreneurship, is developing actionable solutions to the challenges facing 1billion+ people who live in informal settlements in the Global South. The project builds on the GSG’s research work, including the publication of its report, “Informal Settlements: No Longer Invisible”, and work with its National Advisory Boards (NABs) to tailor solutions to different national contexts. In this effort, the GSG is now focused on breaking down silos among stakeholders, from urban experts to impact investors and policymakers. This project works on the barriers to implementation that are holding back the flow of catalytic capital that can address key development challenges in some of the world’s poorest urban areas.

Value and Outcomes: There is an estimated $6.5 trillion global investment gap related to the development needs of informal settlements. By proposing actionable solutions that can benefit these communities, and by working in collaboration with strong local habitat, investment, and philanthropic partners, the GSG has the potential to ignite significant impact and offer strategies that can be replicated and tailored around the world.

For more information on the Global Steering Group for Impact Investing, visit their website.

The Project: Rhia Ventures is working to develop an investment framework that prioritizes equitable outcomes in reproductive and maternal health in the United States. It will develop, test, and share an approach that incorporates a racial and gender equity lens into reproductive and maternal health investments, helping investors and early- and growth-stage companies align structures, policies, and practices and, ultimately, making the market more just, with improved health outcomes for people of color.  

Values and Outcomes: Rhia Ventures’ project addresses a major gap in a sector that often requires significant catalytic capital investments. Less than 2% of venture capital is invested in women’s health, and only 1% is invested in women’s health beyond oncology. Further, people of color face particular barriers to reproductive and maternal healthcare, which often results in negative health outcomes. The incorporation of a racial and gender equity lens into reproductive and maternal health investments has the potential to spur investment and innovation and reduce health disparities.

For more information on Rhia Ventures, visit their website.

The Project: Opportunity International (Opportunity) is a global organization that focuses on high-impact social sectors by partnering with financial institutions to bank the poor and extreme poor living in underserved communities. Opportunity aims to launch a credit support vehicle that will de-risk new loans originated to micro and small borrowers, deploying catalytic capital at scale. The vehicle will establish collateral pledges for financial institutions to grow loan portfolios focused on smallholder farmers, micro-agricultural entrepreneurs, low-cost school owners, and parents of school age children. The credit support mechanism will be enhanced by Opportunity’s flagship Education Finance and Agriculture Finance platforms, offering technical assistance and training for financial institutions and ultimate borrowers.

Value and Outcomes: The project focuses on excluded populations in Sub-Saharan Africa in the sectors of agriculture and education, and it builds on Opportunity’s 50-year experience in the region enhancing and promoting financial services for underserved communities. With the credit support vehicle, Opportunity aims to bridge the gap between available catalytic capital and borrowers by setting the groundwork for a mechanism that will make local loan capital deployment faster, more efficient, and more effective.

For more information on Opportunity International, visit their website.

The Project: In Zambia, fewer than 30% of SMEs have access to formal sources of financing, and even those that do, face lending rates ranging from 22-30%, preventing them from accessing the capital they need to improve productivity, efficiency and growth. This project, with a private-public partnership model, can address that gap by establishing a credit guarantee fund (CGF) that helps expand the capacity of Financial Service Providers (FSPs) and unlocks institutional capital from pension funds and other investors. It flows from an effort that began in 2020, when the Bank of Zambia (BOZ) launched the Targeted Medium-Term Refinancing Facility (TMTRF), a K10 billion (approximately $545 million) fund offering FSPs a credit line to support businesses and households impacted by COVID-19. That experience led the BOZ and the National Advisory Board for Impact Investment Zambia (NABII Zambia) to work towards establishing the CGF to further support local SMEs. The framework supports enterprise lending while mitigating key risks, with catalytic capital playing a foundational role in its development.

Value and Outcomes: This project is designed to fuel progress related to several of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): SDG 5 (Gender Equality), SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth), SDG 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions) and SDG 17 (Partnerships for Goals). It will also help local FSPs to support financial innovations and participate in blended finance instruments benefiting local SMEs. The project is expected to serve as a replicable model with which financial leaders in emerging economies can address systemic gaps.

For more information on NABII Zambia, visit their website. 

The Project: Total Impact Capital plans to launch Total Impact Notes to support the deployment of catalytic capital to high-impact enterprises that have the potential for scale, but that face a financing gap. With this liquid, de-risked product, the firm aims to attract impact-oriented capital from a broader range of private sector investors to enterprises and solutions that have proven their value, but that still face constraints in accessing existing debt products.

Value and Outcomes: The Notes will complement existing funding from development finance institutions, foundations and other impact investors, helping enterprises scale up work on behalf of low-income communities and, over time, as Notes are paid off, redirecting capital towards earlier stage vehicles. The product brings a unique lens with its clear focus on specific UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the intention to recycle funding and its approach to de-risking (with blended finance and technical services). This is a promising mechanism to use catalytic capital in blended finance structures to source institutional capital more widely across regions and sectors. There is significant potential for replicability as well as the opportunity for relevant learnings for the field.

For more information on Total Impact Capital, visit their website. 

The Project: The Coalition for Green Capital will partner with a network of green banks, community development financial institutions (CDFIs), credit unions and minority deposit institutions (MDIs) to establish a national green bank and national distribution network to receive funds and use from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, for the express purpose of financing the rapid adoption of cost-saving clean energy solutions in low- and moderate-income communities.

Value and Outcomes: The effort by the Coalition for Green Capital is action-oriented and aims to create systemic change. It would effectively create a national green bank, helping implement the $27 billion clean energy technology accelerator that was part of the Inflation Reduction Act. This will enable effective, ongoing infrastructure for both climate mitigation and climate justice. This work hopes to support the establishment of new green banks while also channeling capital to CDFIs and community development credit unions and providing additional capacity for MDIs and community banks. 

For more information on Coalition for Green Capital, visit their website.