Entrepreneurial Approaches to Effective Philanthropy

Liesel Pritzker Simmons speaks about impact investing

GPC Members convened for a joint workshop of the Global Philanthropist Circle (GPC) and The Philanthropy Workshop (TPW) in London, at GPC Member Rowan Finnegan’s Conduit Club in Mayfair. The group examined how philanthropists are applying entrepreneurial approaches in their philanthropy, including impact investing, blended finance, social entrepreneurship, and social finance.

Main sessions

Increasing Philanthropic Impact Using Creative Financing Tools

As a Senior Advisor to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and leading their work in blended finance, Nick O’Donohoe spoke about how philanthropy can use capital to drive social influence; new ways to create impact and how they relate to traditional grantmaking and how entrepreneurial approaches to selected social issues can be effective.

“As you would expect for an organization with a strong focus on health, the biggest single investment portfolio is in early stage venture capital into biotechnology platforms and products… What distinguishes from every other biotech venture capitalist is when the foundation invests they ask for and receive what is called a global access agreement. We do not just put our money into a biotech company because we think it is doing good or it has the opportunity to develop products that are beneficial. That is a key criterion, but we insist that with our equity comes this agreement that the products being developed will be used broadly to help beneficiary groups, which are the poorest people in the world.”
– Nick O’Donohoe, Senior Adviser to Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation –

Impact investing: Aligning Purpose with Profit

GPC Member Liesel Pritzker Simmons and philanthropists Charly and Lisa Kleissner shared their experience aligning their family’s investments with their values. Examples included how Liesel, through Blue Haven Initiative, leverages all of their family’s assets, investments as well as grant making. Charly and Lisa founded the Toniic network, where donors commit 100% of their assets to positive social and/or environmental impact. All the of the speakers agreed that impact investing and grant making are complimentary tools to investing money, each serving their own purpose.

“I would be lying if I said we set out with this beautiful theory of change and we have been able to populate every asset class with terrific investments. It has grown much more organically than that. However, what has resulted is I see how this affects my philanthropy now. Because we get to look for business models and for issues that can be addressed with private sector capital and investment capital, I can focus my grant dollars on things that investment capital is very bad at addressing.”
– Liesel Pritzker Simmons, Co-Founder and Principal, Blue Haven Initiative –

Breakout sessions

Empowering Entrepreneurs for Economic Growth

GPC Member Tony Bury shared his experience as Founder of the Mowgli Foundation. Mowgli’s entrepreneurial mentoring model helps investors achieve significant returns, focusing on both the business and personal aspects of the entrepreneur, while facing various challenges from trust issues to cultural differences in viewing entrepreneurs. Mowgli’s programs have trained more than 900 mentors who practiced new leadership skills based upon the “serve to lead” model and has achieved 890% Return on Investment. For more information see Mowgli’s 2015 Impact report.

Large-scale Landscape Restoration Generating Investment Returns

Ecologist and CEO of Commonland Willem Ferwerda described how landscape restoration offers great opportunities for sustainable economic development. Agriculture and climate change are destroying the landscape and ecosystems. The foundation has developed the 4 returns restoration approach (inspiration, social capital, natural capital and financial capital). They work in close cooperation with scientific institutions, business schools, and experts from non-governmental organizations.

Tech-based Solutions to achieve social change in Africa

Founders of Indigo Trust, Fran and William Perrin, co-presented with Martin Tisné from Omidyar Network about their investments with social purpose. Omidyar are a philanthropic investment firm splitting their work in half to invest in for profit and not for profit activities. They provide core funding only, and invest in human capital. Indigo Trust provides smaller grants focusing on sustainable models. They value their role in innovation, and are able to take risks. Together they co-funded the Co-Creation Hub in Lagos, Nigeria bringing together developers, innovators and business professionals to create technology-led solutions supporting development objectives in Africa.

SME Ecosystem to Support Youth and Women Entrepreneurs

Rona Kotecha of the Mara Foundation shared their model of supporting businesses in Africa by teaching them how to become self-sustaining. Creating an online mentoring platform enables entrepreneurs from various countries to have access to business courses, educational toolkits and valuable content.

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