The Brief

The Brief: Economic mobility for workers and preserving home ownership

ImpactAlpha · April 28, 2025

Greetings Agents of Impact!

In today’s Brief:

  • Economic mobility for workers and others strategies for shared prosperity
  • America’s two big birthdays
  • RSF loans for community solar and social services
  • Blending capital to preserve coral reefs and coastal economies

Economic mobility for workers, preserving home ownership, and other strategies for shared prosperity. Raising workers’ living standards and increasing their economic mobility can lower the cost of capital for the companies that employ them – and for the asset management firms that lend to such businesses. That’s the shared-prosperity equation driving Lafayette Square, the investment firm launched by Damien Dwin in 2020. Dwin is a featured speaker on this week’s Agents of Impact Call, which will showcase strategies in ImpactAlpha’s “Playbook for shared prosperity” (RSVP now). The Washington, DC-based lender to mid-sized companies employing “working-class people in working-class places” discounts borrowing costs for companies delivering “worker solutions.” The services aim to help low- and middle-income workers save for retirement, access health benefits, reduce their families’ financial insecurity, and increase their economic mobility. In turn, Lafayette Square gets more favorable terms from its own capital providers. “We have a massive economic incentive to drive this economic mobility,” Dwin said last week at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s Economic Mobility Summit. “Our cost of capital is based on the progress we make against our goals.”

  • Preserving home ownership to build generational wealth. It’s not enough to buy a first home. New owners have to keep their homes. Neglected repairs can grow into more costly emergency expenses, ultimately lowering property values. Missed mortgage and property tax payments can lead to foreclosure. Miami-based Keepingly helps first-time homeowners stay on top of such issues in order to grow and preserve housing wealth that can be passed on to future generations. “Those persons were taught the value of homeownership,” says Keepingly’s Daniel Smith, “but don’t necessarily have the tools to make the right decisions.” Rising insurance premiums also increasingly pose a threat to home ownership. “Community-embedded insurance,” procured through a local government or homeowner association, “spreads risks and financial burdens, resulting in a lower cost per home,” says InnSure’s Charlie Sidoti.
  • Enterprise capital to build effective nonprofits. Nonprofit organizations are businesses, too. With federal funding more vulnerable to pauses, freezes and cutbacks, many nonprofits are being forced to scale back services for the disabled, immigrants, vulnerable children and other people in need. Foundations typically provide project-specific and time-limited grants. In contrast, unrestricted net assets, or “enterprise capital,” gives organizations the financial resilience “to build the organizational infrastructure to engage in long-term, high impact, systems change work,” Capitalize Good’s Andrea Levere and Alexandra Sing write in Nonprofit Quarterly this month. “By shifting from short-term, restricted funding to long-term enterprise capital, funders can help scale financial resilience and sustainability across the sector – and unleash nonprofit power and potential to create a more just, equitable, and sustainable future for all.”
  • Keep reading, “Economic mobility for workers, preserving home ownership, and other strategies for shared prosperity,” by David Bank and Roodgally Senatus on ImpactAlpha. Have a strategy for shared prosperity? Add it to the playbook via this short form.
  • Answer the Call. Join Lafayette Square’s Damien Dwin, Keepingly’s Daniel Smith, Capitalize Good’s Andrea Levere, and InnSure’s Charlie Sidoti on this week’s Agents of Impact Call to explore strategies for shared prosperity, in conversation with ImpactAlpha’s David Bank and Napoleon Wallace, Wednesday, April 30, at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm London. RSVP today.

For America’s 250th birthday, let’s build a playbook for shared prosperity. Next year, America marks two significant anniversaries: 250 years since its founding in 1776, and 150 years since the end of the Reconstruction in 1876, which was abandoned a dozen years after the end of the Civil War. The first event reshaped world history and established the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. “The second marks the moment our nation gave up on an historic opportunity to make good on those ideals for all Americans,” contributing editor Napoleon Wallace writes to kick off his Re:Construction column on ImpactAlpha. We like to remember 1776; we rarely talk about 1876, he says. “If we want to be around for another 250 years, or even another 150, we need to learn from both historical eras,” he says. “We’re still staring down the question that was left unfinished in both the nation’s first and second foundings: Can we truly share the prosperity that we build together?”

  • Partners in equity. In his column, Wallace highlights two ventures that are reimagining property ownership “through a fusion economics lens – blending innovation, equity and investor alignment to unlock access for those historically shut out.” Homium provides interest-free second mortgages covering up to 35% of a home’s value. Instead of monthly payments, homeowners repay the loan only when the property is sold or refinanced, based on its appreciation, not fixed debt. This model protects against the financial risks that often destabilize low-wealth households. Wallace himself is a founder of Partners in Equity, which provides equity-based downpayment assistance to help entrepreneurs purchase the commercial properties where they operate. The wealth-building strategy is reviving the promise of Reconstruction, Wallace says, “leveraging capital to uplift, not extract.” Partners in Equity’s Talib Graves-Manns and Wilson Lester will join ImpactAlpha’s Sherrell Dorsey on PluggedIn, Tuesday, May 6. RSVP now.

Dealflow: Working Capital

RSF invests $23 million for community solar, affordable housing and social services. The US government has pulled the plug on many green and social programs serving low-income communities. San Francisco-based RSF has stepped up with $23 million in new loans this year to seven organizations via its Social Investment Fund. RSF extended a $5 million loan to St. Louis-based Halo Funding, which uses alternative credit scoring methods to help households and small businesses secure financing to install solar systems. It also loaned $1.3 million to Green Power Ventures, which develops community solar projects for multifamily properties, historically-Black college and university campuses, and for faith-based institutions. About $20 billion in federal funding committed by the Biden administration to support such green infrastructure and energy access projects is frozen while it is litigated in the courts (see, “Green bank grantees may get access to loan funds – for now”). “We can do much more to support enterprises like these that are proving out effective models for increasing community well-being and chipping away at systemic problems,” said RSF’s Jasper van Brakel.

  • Affordable housing. RSF and Mission Driven Finance jointly provided a $3 million loan to Hogar Hispano to acquire properties and create affordable housing in neighborhoods where housing prices are rising due to gentrification. Separately, RSF made a $5 million investment in Mission Driven Finance’s Care Access Real Estate fund to help childcare providers in Nevada, California and Colorado renovate and eventually acquire the properties their businesses are based in. In Sebastapol, Calif., north of San Francisco, a $2 million loan will enable a community called Landwell to acquire the land it leases and build on its community education and arts programs, land restoration, small-scale regenerative agriculture, and affordable housing.
  • More.

Mediterrania Capital Partners notches exit from Moroccan consumer goods business. Mediterrania Capital Partners, a Malta-based private equity firm, invests in small and mid-sized companies in Africa to support their growth and to help them deepen their local impact. With Moroccan consumer goods producer Dislog Group, Mediterrania invested in 2021 to give the company a capital boost for developing new products and entering new markets. It also worked with the company to capture and treat wastewater for reuse, reduce energy consumption, switch a portion of its energy use to solar, and recruit more women and youth for the jobs it creates as it grows. Mediterrania says that since it invested, Dislog has added 2,500 employees and increased its revenues by 89% through organic growth and acquisitions. The firm announced a successful exit from Dislog, one of four exits it hopes to complete from its second and third funds this year.

  • Exit strategy. Africa’s narrow private equity sector and difficult fundraising environment are putting strain on funds that are nearing the end of their investment terms. Managers are looking for creative solutions, including self-liquidating instruments, redeemable equity, and small IPOs (see, “Agent of Impact Tokunboh Ishmael”). Mediterranea has not provided details on the terms of its latest exit. The firm is raising its fourth private equity fund, mostly for small and mid-sized businesses in North Africa.
  • Check it out.

Dealflow overflow. Investment news crossing our desks:

  • Capricorn Investment Group, Temasek, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Builders Vision, Lowercarbon Capital, S2G Investments and other investors provided $186 million in Series B equity funding to Electra to finance a demonstration plant in Colorado for its greener method for processing iron. (Electra)
  • Lagos-based Aruwa Capital Management secured $40 million for its second fund from the Mastercard Foundation’s Africa Growth Fund, British International Investment, Visa Foundation, Nigeria’s Bank of Industry and other investors. The gender-lens investment fund manager is at 90% of its fund target. (Aruwa Capital Management)
  • The International Finance Corp. committed $45.6 million to Lendable’s second MSME Fintech Credit Fund to capitalize fintech businesses providing access to credit to emerging market small businesses. (Launch Base Africa)
  • Mirova allocated $40 million to land restoration projects in Argentina, Costa Rica and Madagascar. (Agri Investor)

Impact Voices: Catalytic Capital

Blending capital to preserve coral reefs and coastal economies. Coral reefs are vibrant ecosystems that support a quarter of all marine life and provide billions of dollars in economic and environmental services. Rising global temperatures and ocean acidification threaten their existence. “Protecting and restoring coral reefs is essential not only for the health of the ocean but also for the economic and social stability of coastal regions,” writes Toniic’s Dario Parziale in a guest post on ImpactAlpha. Investments in restoring and protecting marine habitats have been largely ignored by mainstream investors, and even “blue economy” investors often perceive them as high-risk and low-reward. This is a misconception, argues Parziale; marine conservation is flush with investable opportunities for catalytic and commercial investors. Case in point: The Global Fund for Coral Reefs, or GFCR, launched last year to direct capital to reefs with the greatest chance of surviving rising ocean temperatures and acidification (see ImpactAlpha’s Q&A with Dale Galvin, GFCR’s fund manager). 

  • Catalytic structure. GFCR is looking to raise $500 million to deploy in a dozen established growth-stage businesses. It will leverage up to $125 million of junior equity from the Green Climate Fund to derisk capital from senior equity investors. Toniic members collaborated on a joint investment in GFCR through the Sea Forward Ocean Health Fund, a charitable multi-donor advised fund housed at ImpactAssets.
  • Keep reading, “Blending capital to preserve coral reefs and coastal economies,” by Toniic’s Dario Parziale on ImpactAlpha.

Agents of Impact: Follow the Talent

Don’t miss these upcoming ImpactAlpha partner events:

Phenix Capital welcomes Rikkert Beerekamp, formerly with Aqua-Spark, as chief investment officer… Kate Cochran, who stepped down as CEO of Upaya Social Ventures last year, joins Valtas Group as a senior consultant… Omidyar Network is looking for a senior corporate counsel in Washington, DC… Conservation International is hiring a senior manager of nature finance in Nairobi… Acumen America has an opening for a partnerships and operations associate in San Francisco. 

Gates Foundation is recruiting a strategy, planning and management director and chief of staff… Spring Impact is on the hunt for a partnerships and growth director… ImpactVC is offering an eight-week virtual course for venture capital professionals looking to enhance their impact investing skills… SOCAP Global is accepting applications for the 2025 cohort of its venture founders fellowship program.

👉 View (or post) impact investing jobs on ImpactAlpha’s Career Hub.

Thank you for your impact!

– April 28, 2025