CARE Enterprises is the investment arm of CARE, a women and girls-focused humanitarian organization.
CARE announced the fund at the World Economic Forum. The organization also announced a collaboration with WEF’s Fourth Sector Development Initiative, a newly formed multi-stakeholder initiative that brings together capital from public, private and philanthropic institutions committed to growing the fourth sector.
The fund will offer long-term debt, equity, and blended investments to social ventures focused on economic inclusion in frontier markets. “Rather than having these entrepreneurs fit into structures that demand profit-maximization, CARE Enterprises will create a portfolio of transformative ‘benefit-maximizers’ by incentivizing our investees to deliver on their promises of social impact to create dignified jobs that break cross-generational poverty cycles in marginalized communities,” said Marilia Bezerra, a managing partner at Care.
CARE Enterprises’ parent organization has supported previous impact investment initiatives; it is a founding partner for both microfinance investor MicroVest and Small Enterprise Assistance Fund. “Having learned from first generation impact funds, CEI gets creative at the deal structure level, so entrepreneurs can access patient capital that takes into consideration the context in which they operate,” said Bill Unger, a vice chair of board of directors at CARE.
CARE Enterprises is recruiting a managing partner to lead the new fund.