What we do.
We invest in social enterprises to help them grow and achieve their social impact and financial goals.
Our investment is typically in the form of capital (in return for equity in the business) and our time, experience and expertise to help the enterprise.
Fundamentally, we back passionate social entrepreneurs and their management teams. We want to support and assist in ways that make sense to the business and the management team. We bring experience and expertise in strategic planning, business model design, marketing and customer acquisition and operational execution within highly dynamic environments. We also have experience in regulated markets. We have been involved in start-ups, consolidation plays and turnarounds.
We are analytical by nature but understand the critical importance of vision and intuition. Most importantly, we understand there is a fine line between being ‘active’ investors and being a distraction to the management team. We always want to stay on the right side of that line.
In general, we do not seek direct remuneration for our strategic input into the social enterprise, rather we measure our returns in terms of the business’ achievement of its social impact and financial targets.
We are long-term investors. Short-term social impact, financial yield or capital growth are less important to us than achieving long-term results.
So, what don’t we do?
Typically, we are not passive investors. We like to contribute more than just our capital. Likewise, we don’t provide debt, although we can assist our partner businesses to identify and secure debt through Australian financial institutions.
Importantly, we do not view impact investments as ‘concessionary’ or our investments as ‘venture philanthropy’ – that is, we expect the underpinning business models to produce at-market or better returns. We understand that this can take time, as many social enterprises will require scale to achieve their ultimate social and financial targets.