Greetings Agents of Impact!
In today’s Brief:
- Why the best deal for retiring business owners may be an exit to their employees
- Premium prices for coffee farmers in Uganda
- Stirrings of a “cause economy” in Spain
- Increasing the use of program-related investments
Featured: Ownership Economy
For retiring business owners, employee buyout options can go head-to-head with private equity. Retiring business owners that sell to their employees can have their cake and eat it too. An owner considering an exit to a private-equity buyer might do well to compare any offer to the net proceeds they would receive from the sale of their company to their own employees. Transitions to employee ownership can come with attractive tax and financing advantages, as well as the intrinsic satisfaction of keeping their business whole, local and in the hands of the workers who helped build it. “Provided the seller’s business meets certain criteria, employee ownership will win on its own merits because of all the benefits it can offer to that selling owner,” says Ashish Agrawal of Zolidar, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup with an exit-planning tool to let small business owners make just such a comparison. Agrawal and co-founder Sonali Kothari are making the toolkit accessible to lawyers, accountants, management teams and frontline employees, as well as to advisors. “We want to 100x the number of the employee-owned businesses,” Agrawal tells ImpactAlpha.
- Net proceeds. Even some advisors might be surprised to learn that it can be in the best financial interests of their clients to sell to employees rather than to private equity or strategic buyers. In transactions where a business owner sells at least 30% of their company to an employee stock ownership plan, or ESOP, they can defer paying capital gains taxes. More broadly, ESOP transactions are financed with pre-tax company dollars, which can enhance deal value and after-tax proceeds. “The net proceeds to a seller could actually be much higher in a tax-advantaged sale to an ESOP,” says Michael McGinley, a former advisor who launched Monarch Investment Partners to finance owners’ exits to an ESOP (see, “Employee ownership funds seek to give private equity investors a run for their money as businesses change hands”). Investment bankers, he says, generally get paid on the total sales price, or gross proceeds, “so they’re not incentivized to maximize how much you keep.”
- Aha planner. The surge of retiring baby boomer business owners has been accompanied by a spate of startups seeking to guide them through their business exits. Few include employee-ownership planning tools. Zolidar’s “day zero guide” helps owners benchmark employee-led buyouts against private equity and strategic acquirers; an “aha planner” guides owners through their exits to workers. “We’ve built so many more tools for regular sales of businesses that we’re behind on making it easier for employee ownership to happen,” Delta Fund’s Brian Boland tells ImpactAlpha. Boland is one of the earliest backers of Zolidar, alongside his former Facebook colleague David Fischer and Anthropic’s Matt Bell. “Employee ownership has been a well-kept secret for 50 years, not because it doesn’t work, but because the infrastructure to make it accessible never existed,” Boland says. “Now it does.”
- Keep reading, “For retiring business owners, employee buyout options can go head-to-head with private equity” by Roodgally Senatus. Catch up on all of ImpactAlpha’s coverage of the Ownership Economy, in partnership with Sorenson Impact Foundation.
Dealflow: Financing Farmers
Mountain Harvest gets Acumen backing to boost coffee farmer livelihoods in Uganda. Mountain Harvest was launched in 2017 by Lutheran World Relief’s impact fund Ground Up Investing to raise the incomes of smallholder coffee farmers. Mountain Harvest buys organic, Fair Trade arabica beans from more than 1,000 local farmers, offering them 13% to 37% more than market rates, and sells the coffee for export. Farmers receive a bonus based on sales. Acumen invested in the company to help it set up a warehouse, purchase processing equipment, and acquire land to expand its operations. “Acumen’s investment in Mountain Harvest is catalytic,” said Acumen’s Millycent Aoko. “It enables the company to deepen its impact with farmers, strengthen its financial sustainability, and set new standards for gender and youth inclusion in Uganda’s coffee sector.” (See related, “Seven lessons from Acumen’s two decades of ‘patient capital’ investing.”)
- Income diversification. Uganda is now Africa’s top coffee exporter, but Mountain Harvest’s network of smallholder farmers cultivate other crops to sustain themselves when coffee isn’t being harvested. The company offers them training on regenerative agriculture practices and provides high quality inputs for avocados, beans, macadamia and honey production. It also provides microloans to prevent farmers from having to harvest prematurely, which can cut their revenues by as much as 75%. Mountain Harvest’s digital tracing helps farmers fetch premium prices. It had paid out $4.4 million to its farmer network by the end of 2024, according to Corus International, which runs Lutheran World Relief.
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Movements lands €390,000 to turn grassroots organizing into a ‘cause economy.’ A citizen-led campaign defending Spain’s public healthcare system gathered 100,000 signatures and reached the Spanish parliament in less than five weeks, thanks to Movements, a civic tech platform that this week closed €390,000 ($454,000) in pre-seed financing. Movement’s Francisco Polo, who previously led Change.org Spain, is seeking to give grassroots campaigns access to organizing tools and strategic support typically reserved for large institutions. The platform bundles campaign organizing, communications, management and other tools for organizers, NGOs and community leaders. More than 117,000 users have joined since launch, creating nearly 400 campaigns. The funding will support the company’s expansion into the US. “We are building the global infrastructure for anyone to start, scale and sustain their cause,” Polo said. “Our goal is to become the world’s leading citizen empowerment platform and define a new category, the ’cause economy.'” It raised the funding from a number of angel investors.
- Civic tech. Active campaigns on Movements include Signos que cambian el mundo, a sign language legislation drive launched by deaf activist Marcos Lechet that has supporters in the US, Argentina and Costa Rica. Nobel Peace Prize winner Carlos Umaña is using the platform to press the Spanish government to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Separately, impact investors are beginning to test whether democratic participation can attract outcomes-linked capital. In Colombia, Innpactia is structuring Fondo para la Democracia, a proposed $10 million vehicle with Corporacion Inversor aimed at strengthening democratic institutions. The pilot fund will invest in three areas: electoral integrity, independent media sustainability and civic agency. Payments will be tied to national indicators tracked over four to six years.
- More.
Dealflow overflow. Investment news crossing our desks:
- Temasek Trust and UK-based family office Richardson Family invested in Singapore-based Injewelme, an AI healthtech startup that tests for climate-related stress indicators such as blood glucose and hydration. (Temasek Trust)
- Vancouver-based Evok Innovations is in the market with its third fund for clean energy, industrial decarbonization, critical minerals and climate adaptation. (Axios)
- AgDevCo committed $15 million to Victory Group, a Kenya-based farmed tilapia producer. (AgDevCo)
- Morocco-based ZSystems closed a $1.65 million seed round to digitize the country’s retail supply chain. (Wamda)
Signals: Impact First
Program-related investments don’t have to be so hard, or so rare. A $350 million impact allocation unlocked $1 billion in private investment. A low-interest loan helped a pharmaceutical company get regulatory clearance. An equity investment in a fintech company spurred better business governance. All are examples of philanthropies investing, rather than grant-making, to advance their impact goals. The vehicle: program-related investments, or PRIs, an underutilized tool that allows private foundations to earn a return through debt, equity and other investments made from their program budgets. Less than 0.5% of US foundations deploy funding through PRIs. The instrument could have more impact now, with public funding for climate change, conservation, key social programs and international development in retreat. “PRIs typify impact-first investing,” Maoz “Michael” Brown of Wharton Impact’s Impact Investing Research Lab writes in “Demystifying program-related investing.” Brown shares examples from seasoned users and lessons from new adopters to encourage broader use of the philanthropic tool.
- Follow the leader. For foundations, PRI expenditures count toward the tax-law requirement to distribute roughly 5% of their endowment assets each year. PRIs “can stretch a foundation’s program dollars by returning principal that can be redeployed for future charitable activity,” writes Brown. Moreover, they can be deeply catalytic, both financially and for impact. The terms of Gates Foundation’s equity investment in Bangladesh-based mobile money provider bKash “compelled bKash’s board to engage in a rigorous review of its governance, which would be unusual in most grant agreements.” The Packard Foundation’s low-interest loan to Afaxys helped the pharmaceutical company clear FDA approval for a generic oral contraceptive, “expanding affordable access to contraceptive options.” The Kresge Foundation’s $350 million impact investing pool “leveraged more than $1 billion from banks, other foundations and public sector partners.”
- Complexity and capacity. A major obstacle for deployment is the separation between most foundations of investment and grantmaking activities. “PRIs blur this boundary,” Brown writes. “The traditional siloed configuration can leave program staff with a lack of understanding of PRIs, including how they can help advance a foundation’s mission.” Complex structuring can also be a limiting factor. Brown encourages foundations to borrow templates from philanthropic peers; work through experienced intermediaries, like impact fund managers and community development financial institutions; and lean on co-investors to share due diligence costs and monitoring responsibilities. “Proceeding without adequate congruity,” he writes, “invites self-imposed barriers more significant than any inherent difficulty of PRIs.”
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Agents of Impact: Follow the Talent
Ravi Bhatt is promoted to managing director and head of responsible investment at Apis Partners… Temasek’s deep tech venture arm Xora appointed Katie Fehrenbacher as partner… Kinjani seeks an investment associate to join its climate fund.
Morgan Stanley is hiring a venture analyst of sustainability in New York… Ontario Teachers Pension Plan’s venture arm is hiring an analyst in San Francisco… JPMorgan Chase’s sustainable investing and stewardship team has an opening for a business manager in Longon… Energy Impact Partners is looking for a growth and private equity associate in New York.
The Ford Foundation and Sorenson Impact Institute are offering grants of up to $400,000 to help impact investing field-building nonprofits merge or consolidate. Learn more at a webinar on Friday, April 24.
👉 View (or post) impact investing jobs on ImpactAlpha’s Career Hub.
Thank you for your impact!
– April 9, 2026
