The Brief

The Brief: Collaborating to deploy local endowments for local impact

ImpactAlpha · June 12, 2025

Credit: Enterprise Community Partners

Greetings Agents of Impact!

In today’s Brief:

Philadelphia story: Foundations put their endowments to work
Enterprise Community Partners’ $100 million ‘orange bond’
Reducing costs and carbon for food and beverages
Scaling energy startups in Southeast Asia

Featured: Local Impact

In Philadelphia, a dozen foundations are deploying local endowments for local impact. A dozen private foundations in the greater Philadelphia area are working together to turn their endowments – not just their grant budget – toward local investment opportunities in small business finance, inclusive homeownership strategies, affordable housing development and other community-led ventures and initiatives. The foundations, with more than $400 million in combined assets, are collaborating through the Philanthropy Network Greater Philadelphia to share successful strategies and work with local impact investment advisors, including Glenmede and Zenith Wealth Partners, to find investment opportunities. Elizabeth Killough of the UnTours Foundation and Laura Kind McKenna of the Patricia Kind Foundation, were early adopters and led a rallying cry to enlist other local foundations. Both the Kind and UnTours foundations have since achieved 100% mission-alignment with their investment portfolios. “Laura McKenna and Elizabeth Killough were really the first agitators around impact investing, and saying ‘You just need to do it,’” says Barra Foundation’s Kristina Wahl.

All in or carve out? “Mission-aligned investing is a whole new world,” says Alexandra Frazier of the Valentine Foundation, which is on track to align its $5 million endowment with its mission of empowering women and girls by the end of this year, up from 10% in 2019. In Philly’s central city, the Independence Public Media Foundation, previously the public broadcaster WYBE Channel 35, is carving out 5% of its $120 million endowment, or $6 million, for investments in community-owned and -led media and internet projects. Both Valentine and Independence Public Media foundations have selected Zenith Wealth Partners, a Black-owned firm led by Jason Ray, to source place-based investment opportunities. “We wouldn’t know how to do it without Jason,” Frazier says. “We trust him and he’s been great with getting us things that are appropriate for us to invest in.”
Mission aligned. Barra Foundation, with approximately $93 million in assets, has committed to use 95% of its endowment for mission-aligned and responsible investments. Within that, an internal carveout provides catalytic capital to local projects in Philly’s underresourced communities. “It’s the ability of those dollars to unlock other dollars” that creates impact, Wahl tells ImpactAlpha. “It’s the rates, but it’s also the length of time.” Barra’s mission-aligned portfolio includes Kensington Corridor Trust, which is acquiring and redeveloping commercial and mixed-use real estate in North Philly’s Kensington Avenue commercial corridor. IPMF is an investor in The Decarceration Fund, which invests in justice tech ventures. In the city’s southwest, Valentine has backed Girl Concrete, a Black- and woman-owned commercial and residential construction company that hires female contractors to lead its projects.
Keep reading, “In Philadelphia, a dozen foundations are starting to deploy local endowments for local impact,” by Roodgally Senatus on ImpactAlpha.

Dealflow: Gender Smart

Enterprise Community Partners issues $100 million note as first US ‘orange bond.’ The bond is part of Enterprise’s Community Impact Note series, which provides flexible financing to community organizations and facility operators, nonprofits, mission-based for-profits and real estate developers led by women and other underrepresented entrepreneurs. The housing nonprofit partnered with Singapore’s Impact Investment Exchange, which designed and developed the “orange bond” designation for certified bonds that support women’s livelihoods and economic empowerment. The new note is the largest in Enterprise’s series and “supports investments that set a critical precedent to dismantle racial and gender disparities in US real estate markets,” the partners said in a statement. “These funded projects are enhancing the supply of and access to affordable housing, healthcare, education, green infrastructure and transit-oriented development.”

Returns on inclusion. Orange bonds are named after the color of the icon for UN Sustainable Development Goal No. 5 for gender equality. Total verified orange bond issuances are just over $230 million. IIX has issued all but $12 million, mostly through its Women’s Livelihood Bond series for rural and low-income women in Southeast Asia. The other $12 million is from the UK’s Near East Foundation, whose $12 million Refugee Impact Bond, issued in 2021, supports refugee livelihoods in Jordan and Syria. IIX’s partnership with Enterprise represents the first orange bond in the US. IIX hopes to mobilize $10 billion and impact 100 million women and girls through the orange bond initiative by 2030.
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S2G injects $40 million in Sojo Industries to reduce costs and carbon for food and beverages. Food and beverage manufacturers are looking to streamline their packaging and distribution to reduce freight miles, manual labor and emissions. Industrial automation startup Sojo Industries offers robotic packaging systems for customer sites, avoiding the need to ship products to third-party packers. Sojo also operates its own national network of sorting facilities. The Pennsylvania-based company’s geolocation software relies on the blockchain and provides real-time supply chain insights and tracking. “As complexity grows, brands need more agility,” said Matthew Walker of S2G Investments, the investment firm spun out of Builders Vision. “Traditional workflows, marked by multiple handoffs and limited visibility, are no longer sustainable.”

Industrial emissions. Sojo’s products have helped Fortune 500 food and beverage clients, such as Schreiber Foods, eliminate more than five million freight miles and the emissions they would have generated. Freight transportation makes up 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions – up to 11% if warehouses and ports are included.
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Dealflow overflow. Investment news crossing our desks:

Germany’s Proxima Fusion raised €130 million ($148 million), led by Balderton Capital and Cherry Ventures, to help commercialize its stellarator fusion system. UVC Partners, DeepTech & Climate Fonds, Plural, Lightspeed and others also participated. (Proxima)
Atlanta-based and Black-led Collab Capital raised $75 million for its second fund with backing from Apple, Leon Levine Foundation, California IBank and Goldman Sachs Asset Management. The fund will focus on economic mobility, healthcare access and community infrastructure. (Collab Capital)
New York-based Kiwi raised $7.8 million in a round led by LIP Ventures and Advent-Morro Equity Partners to provide credit to unbanked Latino immigrants in the US. (LatamList)
Brazilian oil and gas company Petrobras is raising 500 million reais ($89 million) for a corporate VC fund to invest in renewable energy, decarbonization and other clean tech. Brazilian development bank BNDES and project financing agency Finep invested. (Global Corporate Venturing)

Impact Voices: Energy Transition

Bridging energy startups to commercialization to meet Southeast Asia’s soaring demand. When Henri van Eeghen, the new CEO of Singapore-based nonprofit startup accelerator New Energy Nexus, toured the energy tech scene in Jakarta, Indonesia, last year, founder after founder expressed the same frustration: “We can’t raise the money to build what we know the market needs.” More than 300 early-stage startups are working on solar deployment, grid efficiency, the circular economy, electric mobility and more. Most are still in early ideation or pilot testing. “Founders are solving local problems with local insight,” observes van Eeghen. But early and growth-stage hardware startups are feeling the pinch as tariffs rattle global supply chains and cast a shadow over investment. “What’s needed is a serious recalibration of how we invest in the clean energy future – one that reflects where the need is greatest and opportunity is richest.”

Financial runway. Southeast Asia is one of the world’s fastest-growing energy markets. Electricity consumption is rising 4% annually; the region will account for 25% of global energy demand growth by 2030. Most of the region’s current demand is met with dirty fossil fuels, especially coal. New Energy Nexus mapped clean energy and climate tech ecosystems across Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines and found that most venture funding remains stuck in the seed and Series A stage. Many founders rely on personal money to stay afloat. In Indonesia, 64% of startups are still at the concept or pilot stage. Over half have less than six months of financial runway.
Coordinated action. New Energy Nexus’s venture arm, NEX Ventures, aims to mobilize $100 million to get promising ideas beyond the lab and prototype phase. Van Eeghen calls for more “coordinated action” across the ecosystem. Governments can derisk early-stage deployment with climate innovation funds and public procurement. Corporations can engage as pilot partners and demand drivers. Philanthropic funders can provide catalytic capital to crowd in private investment. “We don’t lack ideas in Southeast Asia,” says van Eeghen. “If [energy] demand is met with fossil fuels, we lock in decades of emissions. If it’s met with innovation, we chart a different path – one that is sustainable, just, and scalable.”
Keep reading, “Bridging energy startups to commercialization to meet Southeast Asia’s soaring demand,” by New Energy Nexus’s Henri van Eeghen.

Agents of Impact: Follow the Talent

World Resources Institute appoints David Widawsky, previously with former President Joe Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency, as US program director to advance climate action and sustainable development across US federal, state and local governments… The US Impact Investing Alliance is looking for a program associate in New York… Also in New York, JPMorgan Chase has an opening for an impact and learning associate.

Hewlett Foundation is recruiting a program officer for climate finance and multilateral initiatives… Hamilton Community Foundation is searching for a director of social finance investments… Citi is hiring a social finance director in London… Also in London, 2150 seeks a sustainability analyst… Future Fund, the Australian government’s sovereign wealth fund, seeks a director for its social and responsible investing activities… Mastercard is on the hunt for a social impact director for Latin America and Caribbean.