The Brief

The Brief: People, purpose and perseverance in NC and DC

ImpactAlpha · April 7, 2025
Durham, North Carolina

Greetings Agents of Impact!

In today’s Brief:

  • Purple party for people, purpose and perseverance
  • Seeding innovative climate finance ideas 
  • Bringing transparency to fashion supply chains  
  • Financing rooftop solar in India

People, purpose and perseverance: Assembling the playbook for shared prosperity. Equity and ownership for small businesses. Lower cost of capital for majority-minority cities and colleges. Startup capital for overlooked founders. Place-based investment ecosystems. Even as President Donald Trump’s tariffs tank markets and roil global trade, Agents of Impact in North Carolina are staying focused on mobilizing capital for local entrepreneurs and building wealth for families of all kinds. Together, they are assembling a “playbook for shared prosperity.” “The priority for making sure our economy is inclusive, that everybody is welcome at the table – the data is overwhelming in support of that,” says Thom Ruhe of NCIdea, an entrepreneurship accelerator and investor, said last week at the Kenan-Flagler School of Business at the UNC Chapel Hill. “It’s not just the right thing to do. It’s economically the smart thing to do.” Ruhe kicked off “Re:Construction NC,” produced by ImpactAlpha with GOOD TRBL, a collaboration of North Carolina-based fund managers and ecosystem builders, which NCIdea is supporting. “My challenge to you all now is that this is not the time to pull back,” said Ruhe. “This is actually the time to get involved, to get loud, to get in trouble.”

  • Purple party. ImpactAlpha will continue to build out the playbook for shared prosperity this Tuesday, April 8, at “Re:Construction DC,” produced with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and hosted by Aspen Institute (RSVP). With the theme “People, purpose and perseverance,” many guests will wear purple to reflect that solutions to kitchen table challenges like high housing costs and small business financing are not that different for “blue” urban areas and “red” rural areas. The event will take place on the eve of the Aspen Institute’s annual Employee Ownership Forum, a two-day event that aims to highlight how the experience of ownership changes the reality of work for workers. The Aspen Institute estimates that investment in ownership – of homes, commercial real estate and financial assets, as well as of companies employees are helping build – could increase by 10x the wealth of households of color and those in the bottom half of US wealth distribution, who now own less than 2% of US household wealth.
  • Good trouble. The GOOD TRBL grouping is the brainchild of Napoleon Wallace, the indefatigable entrepreneur living with ALS who is the subject of ImpactAlpha’s mini-documentary, “Equity and ownership.” Good trouble, of course, is a reference to the late US Congressman John Lewis’s admonition to get into “good trouble, necessary trouble.” In the film, Wallace takes impact investing to task for failing to fulfill its promise of improving outcomes in low- and moderate-income communities. “Impact investing is at a crossroads,” he said. “It’s up to us to fight, scrap and demand that the broader market internalize the impact of their investments. That type of wholesale conversion is the next leap forward and the highest and best use of impact investing, especially in this moment.” In the run-up to last week’s gathering, the Raleigh-Durham television station WRAL featured Wallace on its evening news.
  • What works. Wallace, along with Talib Graves-Manns and Wilson Lester, is building Partners in Equity to help Black business owners buy the commercial properties in which they operate. The appreciating asset can then be leveraged for growth capital and generational wealth. The firm is close to closing its second fund. “Partners in Equity is essentially that rich uncle fund for those entrepreneurs,” Lester said at the North Carolina event. Activest, an investment research and analytics firm, made its reputation by calling out credit risks in cities that are reliant on excessive fees and fines on residents of color. It has launched an investment advisory form, Next World Partners. “We’re trying to reduce the cost of capital for Black and Brown cities and institutions,” said Activest’s Ellen Ward. With uncertainty around federal money flows, the bond market will become an increasingly important way to raise capital for cities and universities, she said. “There are ways to shift how capital flows, and shift the power of who’s making decisions.”
  • Keep reading, “People, purpose and perseverance: Assembling the playbook for shared prosperity,” by David Bank on ImpactAlpha. To add a play to ImpactAlpha’s “Playbook for shared prosperity,” complete this short form. To schedule a showing of “Equity and ownership: Napoleon Wallace and the Reconstruction of Black wealth” drop us a note. 

Dealflow: Climate Finance

Climate finance lab puts $1 million into five funding mechanisms. The Global Innovation Lab for Climate Finance provided conditional grants to five organizations that have designed vehicles to unlock climate financing in emerging markets. The awards are the first from the Lab’s pre-seed capital facility, launched last year to help promising climate finance ideas move from design to implementation. Growth Next Generation Agriculture, or GAN, aims to help Brazil transition to more sustainable agriculture by supporting small producers and sellers of bio-based crop treatments and farm inputs. GAN securitizes the revenues from producers’ sales contracts, via Agribusiness Receivables Certificates, to help them raise capital. The certificates are gaining traction as a fundraising tool for other sustainable agriculture fund managers and businesses in Brazil, including Kawa Fund, which works in cocoa production, and Grupo Gaia, which fundraises for rural cooperatives (see, “In Brazil, local impact opportunities emerge from global uncertainty”).

  • Adaptation and mitigation. Resilient Municipal Market Fund, or ReMark, is ushering more capital to adaptation initiatives in Africa’s food system by helping urban food markets secure local currency and concessional debt as well as technical assistance to make climate-resilient upgrades, improve business operations, and reduce food waste. CoolPact Capital in India is a blended-finance fund for early stage businesses developing and distributing cooling and refrigeration technologies with lower environmental impact.
  • Nature-based solutions. In Mexico, Regenera Ventures is nurturing the transition to regenerative agriculture by providing redeemable equity to farmers and landowners restoring degraded land. Structured Finance for Nature is issuing green bonds for conservation and carbon projects in Southeast Asia. The Lab’s pre-seed capital facility offers grants of up to $250,000 that are disbursed as recipients achieve specified milestones.
  • Check it out.

Fairly Made raises $16 million for sustainable fashion supply chains. A growing spotlight on the environmental and social toll of the fashion industry has brands scrutinizing their supply chains. The fashion industry is among the largest consumers of water and generates up to 8% of global carbon emissions, while over-production (and consumption) results in tons of used textiles going to landfills each year. Paris-based Fairly Made offers software to help fashion brands bring visibility to their supply chains and manage their impacts. Textile life-cycle analysis, for example, helps brands optimize material choices and processes; digital passports track the origin of raw materials and manufacturing. The women-led company raised €15 million ($16.2 million) from BNP Paribas Solar Impulse Venture Fund, GET Fund, ETF Partners and Frenchfounders. 

  • Ecological solutions. “Once a nice-to-have, supply chain visibility has now become a critical first step in implementing sustainable practices,” said Laura Wirsztel of BNP Paribas SIVF. The ecological transition fund, which invests in solutions from food and agriculture to industrial innovation, clinched €172 million ($188 million) in January from corporations including ADP Group, institutional investors such as AGPM, and family offices.
  • More. 

Aerem secures $11.7 million to expand solar financing for Indian businesses. Despite a surge in rooftop solar installations in India, businesses struggle to make the switch because of the high upfront costs of installing solar panels. Aerem is improving access to specialized solar financing for commercial and industrial solar customers through its own financing arm, Netzero Finance, and through partner banks like Bank of Baroda. The company offers collateral-free loans of 500,000 to 10 million rupees ($5,800 to $117,000). It also works on the other side of the solar sector, providing supply-chain financing for solar engineering, procurement and construction companies.

  • Series A. The company’s equity round was backed by the University of Tokyo Edge Capital Partners, which has amassed an $800 million portfolio of early stage tech startups worldwide. British International Investment, Schneider Electric’s venture arm, and Riverwalk Holdings joined the round, while Blume Ventures and Avaana Capital re-upped their investments. 

Dealflow overflow. Investment news crossing our desks:

  • Citi Social Finance and the State Bank of India partnered on a $295 million facility to expand access to credit for smallholder farmers. (Economic Times)
  • ImpactA Global, a women-led debt investor for emerging markets infrastructure projects, raised $200 million for its fund from Legal & General, IDB Invest, Mobilist and other investors. (ImpactA Global)
  • Cameroon’s First African Company received €2 million ($2.2 million) in debt from the International Finance Corp., half of which has concessional terms, to expand local dairy and fruit juice manufacturing. (IFC)

Agents of Impact: Follow the Talent

Don’t miss these upcoming ImpactAlpha partner events:

The Ford Foundation and the REDF Impact Investing Fund launch the Emerging Appalachian Investors Fund to equip students at Marshall University, West Virginia University and Ohio University with impact investing skills… Haskè Ventures and Riffle Ventures are kicking off the Luyway climate venture studio pilot in West Africa, with support from the ClimateWorks Foundation… Generate is hiring a principal for capital markets in San Francisco… Trust Neighborhoods seeks a senior operations manager.

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

Thank you for your impact!

– April 7, 2025