From the southwestern US to the Andean Amazon to Southeast Asia, a growing group of capital owners and allocators are investing in Indigenous communities through dozens of impact fund managers.
Development finance institutions, philanthropies, impact-focused funds and corporate investors are proving that there is opportunity for investors across the capital stack.
“There is a way to invest now to create alpha,” says Kate Finn of Tallgrass Institute, which has detailed the kinds of financing models that can lay a foundation for effective community development. “And Indian Country is ready.”
ImpactAlpha’s recent reporting has covered more than two dozen limited partners that are backing indigenous centered strategies around the world.
United States
Spruce Root’s Seacoast Trust raised capital last fall from the Rasmuson Foundation, the Home Planet Fund, Edgerton Foundation, Hewlett Foundation, Wilburforce Foundation, and Chorus Foundation. The trust was launched with anchor funding from Sealaska and The Nature Conservancy to support Indigenous-led stewardship and economic development in Southeast Alaska.
A coalition of foundations backed Navajo Power, a Navajo-led public benefit corporation developing clean energy infrastructure on tribal lands. Prior investors include the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Schmidt Family Foundation, Catena Foundation, Wallace Global Fund, and others. The company is now building out a pipeline of utility-scale solar projects.
“When we’re talking about equity, the question for us was how to put tribes in a position where they can invest,” co-founder Brett Isaac told ImpactAlpha last month. “We wanted to create incentives beyond just solar panels for the community to invest.”
Latin America
In Ecuador and across the Amazon Basin, investors are backing intermediaries working directly with Indigenous and local communities.
Sorenson Impact Foundation, Full Spectrum Capital Partners, CREAS Ecuador, DF Impact Capital, Boosting Opportunities, WCCN, and UnTours Foundation have invested in IMPAQTO Capital’s first fund to support early-stage social ventures in the Andean region.
Sorenson and DF Impact Capital also committed to NESsT’s Lirio Fund, along with A to Z Impact, which provides flexible financing to small and medium-sized enterprises, including Indigenous-led enterprises in the Amazon.
Fundacion Aliados, which focuses on smaller markets in the Andean and Amazonians region, has commitments from the European Union, McKnight Foundation, IDB Lab, WWF, American Bird Conservancy, Re:Wild, World Centric, and Cotopaxi.
Asia
Japan’s Oji Holdings in March invested $300 million in New Forests’ Future Forests Innovation Fund, which has partnered with tribal communities to develop carbon offset projects in the US, as well as in Southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa.In Southeast Asia, RSF Social Finance’s Noken Fund is supporting Mitra BUMMA, a women-led initiative working with Indigenous and local communities to build regenerative, community-led economies rooted in traditional knowledge.
