The Brief: These families, foundations and funds are investing for ‘impact first’

Greetings Agents of Impact and Happy New Year! 

In today’s Brief:

• Impact-first investors embrace the tradeoffs 
• Climate-smart services for Indian farmers
• Octopus Energy’s billion-dollar cleantech spinout
• Financing perpetual purpose trusts

Featured: Looking Ahead to 2026

Seeking real-world outcomes, these families, foundations and funds are investing for ‘impact first’. Good intentions are not enough. A lively discussion erupted during the holiday break over the troublesome reality: If impact investing is so good, why are things still so messed up? More to the point, if impact investing is so attractive, why does capital remain in such short supply where it’s needed most? One answer, it seems, is that impact investing may not be so good, nor that attractive. “Luckily, I have a solution to the myriad disappointments of impact investing,” Mulago Foundation’s Kevin Starr writes in Stanford Social Innovation Review. “Get rid of it.” Starr’s screed is the latest critique of those investors who claim to point their portfolios toward impact but continue to insist on risk-adjusted “market rates” of return. Intentions without concessions have left unfunded many needed innovations, particularly in poor countries, he says, an especially cruel irony as traditional foreign aid dries up. “It’s not going to happen without concessionary finance,” including cheap loans, risky equity positions and, yes, straight-up grants, Starr says. “That leaves us with just philanthropy and commercial investing.” Many of the thoughtful responses conceded, and even piled on, to Starr’s critique of market-rate impact investing, but not necessarily to his binary framing (see, for example, four salient objections from Dalberg’s Kusi Hornberger). For financing high-impact – but possibly low-return or high-risk – ventures, there is a third way: impact-first investing.

• Family matters. Ceniarth, the London-based family office of Diane Isenberg, is a long-time champion of impact-first investing, having deployed $500 million of impact-first capital over the past decade. “We’re just using capital to have measurable, demonstrable impact on sectors that matter,” Ceniarth’s Greg Neichin said on ImpactAlpha’s Agents of Impact Call in October, which charted the “surprising resurgence” of impact-first investing. There’s still the question of how and where to deploy such capital. Trimtab, an “unapologetically impact-first” holding company, has raised more than $60 million from seven wealthy families and made 10 fund investments, including Acre Impact Capital, Common Trust and Seven Generations Capital. Its broad mandate “allows you to pick the highest risk-adjusted impact across a whole bunch of different opportunities,” Trimtab’s Caleb Ballou told ImpactAlpha in the first in-depth profile of the new company. “So much of this is just about how we cut the pie differently,” Alex Evangelides of A to Z Impact said on The Call. “If you, as the investor, are willing to take a smaller piece of the pie, it can go somewhere else – and a lot of good things can happen if you do.”
  
• True cost of impact. Impact-first fund managers have become more confident in their market positioning. In October, Open Road Impact, along with Acumen, Kiva, the Miller Center for Global Impact and four other impact-first fund managers released a study, “The true cost of impact-first investing.” Catalytic investments in the study enabled at least six-fold (and up to 40x) growth in reach and scale of impact. “The findings suggest that strategic subsidy is not a stopgap,” the authors wrote. “It’s a force multiplier.” In her ImpactAlpha guest post, “Standing up for impact-first capital,” Bressan called on allocators to carve out allocations to impact-first strategies. Open Road led by example, converting to a nonprofit to pursue greater risk and raising $35 million from impact-first family offices. On Collective Action for Just Finance’s “Transformative 25” list of impact-first funds, Open Road is joined by Total Impact Capital, Seacoast Trust, The Fund for Jobs Worth Owning, Community Credit Lab, Clarke Street Fund and more.
  
• Smarter catalytic capital. MacArthur Foundation, along with Rockefeller Foundation and Omidyar Network, launched the Catalytic Capital Consortium in 2019 to broaden the deployment, and the appeal, of flexible investments that accept disproportionate risk or concessionary returns to generate impact and crowd in commercial capital (disclosure: C3 supports ImpactAlpha’s coverage of catalytic capital). The consortium has grown to include a dozen members, including Ceniarth, Blue Haven Initiative and Builders Vision, and the Ford, Sorenson Impact and Surdna foundations, which joined C3 in May. “Rising interest in catalytic capital is particularly encouraging because it deepens and extends the reach of impact investing overall,” MacArthur Foundation’s Debra Schwartz told ImpactAlpha. ImpactAlpha collaborated on a series based on C3’s publication, “Addressing capital gaps: A guide to strategic deployment of catalytic capital.” “Catalytic capital remains a crucial yet scarce resource,” Harvey Koh wrote. “We urgently need our catalytic capital to work harder than it ever has before.”
  
• Keep reading, “Seeking real-world outcomes, these families, foundations and funds are investing for ‘impact first’,” by David Bank and Dennis Price. Catch up on all of our look-aheads to 2026. 

Dealflow: Climate Tech

Arya raises $80.5 million to invest in climate resilience for India’s farmers. Arya had a unique pairing of services for India’s smallholder grain farmers when it launched in 2013: post-harvest logistics and crop storage to curb food spoilage, plus working capital loans to tide farmers over between harvest and sale. The Delhi-based company is among the most successful agtech startups in India, operating more than 12,500 warehouses and facilitating more than $1.3 billion annually in farmer loans. With farmers facing greater climate-related threats to their livelihoods, the company is expanding its services with funding from climate-focused GEF Capital Partners, a spinout from the multilateral Global Environment Fund. GEF led Arya’s 7.3 billion-rupee ($80.5 million) Series D equity round. Arya secured the latest capital despite a slump in global grain prices. The company says it manages default risk by requiring farmers to put up their grain as collateral.

• Smart farms. In November, Arya rolled out its “smart farm centers” to provide farmers with free digital tools, training, services like soil testing and drone-based crop monitoring, and connection points to share experiences and practices with each other. The centers are run by female farmers from each community. Arya has 25 such centers in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Gujarat and Maharashtra and aims to add 75 more over the next 18 months. The initiative secured Arya a climate-smart agriculture award from impact investor responsAbility. Arya’s growth since inception has been fueled by impact investors, including agtech-focused Omnivore in Mumbai, Quona Capital, Asia Impact and Lightrock.
  
• Check it out. 

Octopus Energy Group raises $1 billion for spin out of utility-focused venture Kraken. The UK-based energy firm operates multiple business lines, all focused on the renewable energy transition. Kraken is its AI-based services platform for utility companies including National Grid and EDF Energy in the UK, Tokyo Gas in Japan, and E.ON in Germany. The funding round is the first Octopus raised specifically for Kraken. With the capital, Octopus will spin off the unit into a standalone company valued at $8.6 billion. The round was backed by D1 Capital Partners, Fidelity International, Durable Capital Partners and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board. Octopus will retain a 13.7% stake.

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Dealflow overflow. Investment news crossing our desks:

• Colombian fintech venture Monet secured $24 million in Series A financing to provide digital loans to individuals without credit histories, including Venezuelan migrants in Colombia. (Latam Fintech)
  
• Leapfrog-backed CarDekho Group raised $10 million for its career and college admissions support business, CollegeDekho. (YourStory)
  
• Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund ADQ and the Gates Foundation announced a four-year, $40 million partnership for responsible AI and edtech in Africa (see related, “Four unsolicited ideas for sunsetting the Gates Foundation”). (Gates Foundation)
  
• VentureX, a startup accelerator in the Middle East, backed Egypt-based Croptimus to upcycle agricultural waste into bio-products. (Wamda)

Impact Voices: Ownership Economy

Financing the future of perpetual purpose trusts. Most businesses in the US are either privately held by a small group of people or publicly held by shareholders that expect to maximize profits. Both models excel at preserving and consolidating wealth. “When it comes to addressing our most pressing issues – wealth inequality, racial justice, climate change – these models don’t cut it,” write Regenerative Social Finance’s Dana Stranz and Purpose Trust Ownership Network’s Issie Corvi in a guest post. “They make matters worse.” Impact investors are turning to alternative ownership structures for the millions of businesses changing hands as baby boomer owners retire. Perpetual purpose trusts embed a founder’s mission or values into ownership itself (see, “A Utah auto shop demonstrates a pathway to worker ownership via a perpetual purpose trust”). “What would it take,” ask Stranz and Corvi, “to move this promising model from the margins to the mainstream?”

• Financing and familiarity. Like any business, companies transitioning to a perpetual purpose trust need capital to buy out exiting owners and to grow. The problem: “Few lenders have experience financing businesses structured as perpetual purpose trusts,” the authors write. Financing works best when lenders “lean into relationships and shared values, rather than treating the deal as a simple transaction.” Organically Grown Company and Natural Investments, which created trusts with backing from RSF, show that trust-owned businesses can be bankable, they say (see, “This sustainable investment firm is now governed by a perpetual purpose trust”). “Perpetual purpose trusts can help mission-driven organizations stay mission-driven forever.”
  
• Keep reading, “Financing the future of perpetual purpose trusts,” by Dana Stranz of Regenerative Social Finance and Issie Corvi of the Purpose Trust Ownership Network. on ImpactAlpha. Learn more at Purpose Trust Ownership Conference in Austin, Texas, Feb. 26-27.

Agents of Impact: Follow the Talent

Louise Yeung, who served as the climate lead for New York City’s comptroller’s office and policy director for Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s campaign, is named the city’s chief climate officer… Joanna Cohen joins Builders Vision from MacArthur Foundation as the family office’s head of impact management and measurement… Sarah Pinto Peyronel is leaving Emerson Collective, where she has served as a venture investing partner since 2018… Joshua Miguel Jongewaard becomes director of investments for Working Capital for Community Needs.

Next50 is recruiting a strategic initiatives senior manager… iAlumbra Capital is searching for a bilingual senior investment associate in the US or Mexico… UK-based Social Investment Business is looking for a head of business and market development… British International Investment is recruiting a climate change manager focused on South and Southeast Asia… The recruitment firm Hedge Impact is looking for an impact-first investment origination associate for a family office in London… Ellevest seeks an operations associate.

Applications are open for climate and regeneration-focused startups interested in presenting at the virtual SuperGreen Live Demo Day in late January.

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

Thank you for your impact!

– Jan. 5, 2026