Financing transitions to employee ownership to deliver wins for workers and investors. It’s the age-old struggle: labor and capital are often at odds in the workplace and the financial markets. Case in point: the strike against the Big Three American automakers, which has raised anxiety in political and financial circles. Conversely, the alignment can be powerful when empowered workers have a meaningful stake in their companies’ long-term success. This week’s Agents of Impact Call features investors who are betting that worker ownership is not only good for labor, it’s good for capital, too. “Mosaic’s exclusive focus on employee ownership provides an attractive differentiation in a crowded lower middle market,” says Ian Mohler of Charlotte-based Mosaic Capital Partners, which helps companies transition to employee stock ownership plans, or ESOPs, a time-tested method of employee ownership. As many as three in five businesses in the US will seek a sale in the coming decade, driven by a “silver tsunami” of older owners in search of succession plans. Featured on this week’s Call:
Complete Farmer nets $10 million to connect Ghana's farmers. Complete Farmer started as a "crowdfarming" platform to connect Ghana's smallholder farmers to funders. It has grown into an agri marketplace so farmers also gain access to inputs, advice and markets. Its pre-Series A equity round included $7 million from Acumen's Resilient Agriculture Fund, or AFAF, Alitheia Capital, Proparco, VestedWorld and DP World. Sahel Capital, AlphaJiri Investment Fund and Global Social Impact Investments provided $3.4 million in debt.
Policy tailwinds can buoy investments, but impact relies on business innovation. Venture firm Impact Engine has seen the positive and negative impacts of regulation on its portfolio this year. “Government policy can act as a headwind or a tailwind to impact investments, and this is even more noticeable at times when the capital markets themselves are challenging,” Impact Engine’s Roger Liew writes in a guest post on ImpactAlpha (listen to Impact Engine’s Priya Parrish podcast conversation, “Scaling purpose-built impact”). For example: Workit Health helps people recover from addictions, including by prescribing medication via its online portal. During the Covid pandemic, the Drug Enforcement Administration loosened restrictions on prescriptions via telemedicine. That policy was reversed in February. Liew says the move hurts rural populations and people in crisis, as well as Workit’s business. On the flip side, solar subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act benefit PosiGen, a developer of affordable solar power. “As with Workit, we invested in PosiGen before the legislation, because we believed in the economics of the business,” says Liew.
Don’t miss these upcoming ImpactAlpha partner events:
ImpactAlpha, August 25 – A growing ecosystem of Native-led entrepreneurs, lenders, financial intermediaries and nonprofits are driving Indian Country’s emerging economy. “It’s kind …
ImpactAlpha, July 28 – Most historically Black colleges and universities were formed during the Reconstruction era. In the more than a century since, Spelman, …
ImpactAlpha, Jun. 22 – Even as some politicians ramp up anti-ESG rhetoric, asset owners and allocators are signaling an appetite for investment strategies …
ImpactAlpha, Mar. 31 – The search for a universal metric to guide investments in racial justice and equitable wealth-building was…aspirational. “We are still a …
ImpactAlpha. Feb. 24 – “A labor market where workers have more opportunities and have more power and have more leverage is a good …
ImpactAlpha, Feb. 9 – The fatal beating by police of Tyre Nichols in Memphis last month exposed risks to the city’s finances that have …
ImpactAlpha, Nov. 18 – Cities around the U.S. are raising low-cost capital in the municipal bond markets by highlighting intentional efforts to address long-standing …
ImpactAlpha, September 30 – Capital to support women’s economic growth and financial inclusion is flowing – finally! – in many advanced economies. In emerging …
ImpactAlpha, Sept. 19 – Investors, entrepreneurs, corporate executives and world leaders have descended on New York for Climate Week, the annual gathering alongside the …
ImpactAlpha, June 27 – ImpactAlpha’s spring season of Agents of Impact Calls spanned a period of tumult in the financial markets: instability in …
ImpactAlpha, June 3 – Just as investment in financial inclusion in Africa was really ramping up, a market downturn threatens to slow progress. Or …
ImpactAlpha, May 13 – One defining outcome of the pandemic: a boom in entrepreneurship. A record five million businesses were started in the …
David Bank is joined by Marjorie Kelly of The Democracy Collaborative to explore the ways that impact investors both help and hinder systemic …
🎧 Impact Briefing. Host Brian Walsh chats with Amy Cortese to set the stage for the UN General Assembly and Climate Week NYC. …
David Bank catches up with Robert Munson, President of SOCAP and Managing director at the Sorenson Impact Center, who is putting together next …
Pro Mujer’s Carmen Correa joins host Monique Aiken to share how the pioneering Latin American microfinance institution’s bonds are democratizing gender lens investing …
ImpactAlpha, August 25 – A growing ecosystem of Native-led entrepreneurs, lenders, financial intermediaries and nonprofits are driving Indian Country’s emerging economy. “It’s kind …
Paris Prince of the Intentional Endowments Network joins host Monique Aiken to talk about how impact investors are responding to legal attacks on …
Quito, Ecuador, is more than 9,000 feet above sea level. But even higher than the city are Andean wetlands that filter, store and …
David Bank chats with Acre Africa’s Niza Banda in the next conversation from the recent “Connecting capital to communities” gathering at the Salzburg …
Drawing Africa’s pension funds deeper into impact investing is one of the goals of this week’s Africa Impact Summit in Cape Town, South …
David Bank chats with Empowa’s Glen Jordan in the next conversation from the recent “Connecting Capital to Communities” gathering at the Salzburg Global …
David Bank chats with FarMart’s Samridhi Singh in the next conversation in our series from the recent Salzburg Global Seminar on “Connecting Capital …
David Bank chats with FarMart’s Samridhi Singh in the next conversation in our series from the recent Salzburg Global Seminar on “Connecting Capital …
The impact investing industry is in a unique position in that its main objectives align with those of any (sensible) government. It wants …
Note: This is an abridged version for ImpactAlpha. For all 10 tips, please visit this article on Medium.com. At the end of 2022, …
As world leaders gather in New York City this week for the UN General Assembly and New York Climate Week, investors and funders …
African countries have huge infrastructure needs, and governments need private investment to help meet them, particularly considering increasing climate impacts and green development …
Renewable energy generation and storage opportunities were a key focus at last week’s Africa Climate Summit in Nairobi, culminating in $26 billion in new …
Impact investing offers the promise of greater impact per dollar as funds are returned and recycled into new investments that generate new impact. …
This essay is adapted from Marjorie Kelly’s forthcoming book, “Wealth Supremacy: How the Extractive Economy and the Biased Rules of Capitalism Drive Today’s …
The European Union’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation, known as SFDR, is making waves in the investment industry. The legislative measure, introduced in 2019, …
The temperature was over 110 degrees Fahrenheit the day I met Roopa, a widowed mother of three, on her tiny plot of land …
An increasingly important question for impact investors is how to validate that their investments are having the intended impact on people or the …
Over the last few years, the main story around U.S. food waste funding has been that private capital has started to pay attention and invest …
Investors focused on societal impact are often concerned with corporate treatment of workers. To assess job quality performance across a portfolio, they generally …
ImpactAlpha, September 8 — In 15 years in impact investing, Christopher Bentley noticed “a lot of for-profit companies focused on the criminal justice …
ImpactAlpha, August 18 – Monica Brand Engel’s advice to impact investors is this: Imperfect execution is ok. “Authentic impact is about accepting imperfection …
ImpactAlpha, Aug. 11 – Samuel Yeboah isn’t discouraged by the economic storm battering his home country of Ghana and many other emerging economies. “As …
Many investors look at promising new climate solutions and say, ‘Great, come back to me when you have traction.’ Azolla Ventures is more …
ImpactAlpha, June 30 – The first thing that Katherine Stodulka does when you meet her is suggest you meet someone else. Then she’ll …
ImpactAlpha, May 26 – A decade ago, investors pushed back against the loan products Jessica Espinoza was designing for female business owners as …
ImpactAlpha, May 12 – Nigeria-born climate entrepreneur and “professional nomad” Aina Abiodun is bullish on place-based climate innovation. “There is nothing more urgent than …
ImpactAlpha, May 5 – John Moore quit his corporate gig and moved to Philadelphia two decades ago. He found a city rich in …
ImpactAlpha, April 28 — A first generation Nigerian-American, Su Sanni grew up in East New York, Brooklyn and Jamaica, Queens. The low-income neighborhoods, …
ImpactAlpha, Apr. 21 – Attorney and academic Lourdes Germán recognized early the power of public finance. She has spent years working at firms including …
ImpactAlpha, Apr. 14 – “Net zero is not going to get us anywhere,” Ariane Mahler of Veridien Global Investors tells ImpactAlpha’s David Bank. “You …
ImpactAlpha, March 24 – Hundreds of companies and investors this week urged policymakers to protect their “freedom to invest responsibly,” marking a new …
By Santiago Cortes and Jérôme Tagger Consider this: The $400 billion in private capital that is needed annually for large-scale conservation, according to Credit …