At the recent Sorenson Impact Summit, our Co-founder & CEO David Lynn joined Debra Schwartz of the MacArthur Foundation for a conversation on catalytic capital, along with Aner Ben-Ami of Candide Group and Kim Folsom of Founders First Capital Partners.
David shared two examples of how Mission Driven Finance uses catalytic capital:
- The launch of CARE, focused on expanding access to child care by owning child care properties and acting as the mission-aligned landlord for family-based child care, primarily for women of color: “To launch that, we initially used a series of philanthropic capital to hire the team, pay consultants and lawyers, and get everything moving. We are now in the process of closing our first PRI’s and high net-worth catalytic investors, setting the stage for more institutional capital to follow.”
- Working with Hawaii Investment Ready on a place-based effort: “They are launching a fund alongside their accelerator to support healthy food access and Native Hawaiian-led organizations and small businesses. This is a very bespoke place-based effort with deep community ties…We can get a small amount of catalytic capital from investors who would never take one of these transactions on their own…That’s where we look at the power of bringing different forms of catalytic capital together for a deep place-based effort.”
