Additional Resources

New Perspectives on Financing Small Cap SME’s in Emerging Markets: The Case for Mezzanine Finance - Bennick, E. & Winters, R (2016)

“Mezzanine finance is a generic term for financing techniques that incorporate elements of debt and equity in a single investment. A key aspect of these growing small cap SME mezzanine providers is that they are adapting existing models to address some of the main risks associated with small cap SME investing.”

Mezzanine Financing for Access to Energy in Sub-Saharan Africa - Eelco Benink & Tom Gibson

“This document is specifically aimed at familiarizing companies and entrepreneurs with what mezzanine structures are and how they work best in the context of the A2E sector in SSA.”

Sweet Deal: How One Company Found a New Way to Support Cacao Farmers - Jessica Pothering (2014)

“Maya Mountain Cacao uses a financial instrument called the “demand dividend” arrangement that it says aligns investments with the seasonality of agriculture to raise capital for expansion into northern Belize and Guatemala.”

Adobe Capital, IGNIA Exit Mexican Home Rehab Start-up Provive - Pothering, J. (2019)

“Early stage impact investor Adobe Capital has exited and venture capital firm IGNIA has partially exited its investment in Provive, following Provive’s recent debt funding round backed by an unnamed international bank.”

Abandoned Houses Prove Golden Opportunity in Mexico - Otegón, L.S (2014)

“Since its creation in 2010, Provive has become a profitable social impact enterprise that both renovates houses and revitalizes entire communities. Its largest shareholder is IGNIA, the Mexican impact investment fund.”

Libes, L. (2016). The Next Step for Investors:Revenue-based Financing. Lunarmobiscuit Publishing.

“Revenue-based investing explains an alternative style of investing, one that doesn’t need the exceedingly rare 10x return to make money for investors, introducing a set of structures for investing in revenues rather than exits.”

Deep Thoughts about Revenue-Based Finance Structures - Brian Mikulencak 2017

“About a year ago, I perceived a general shift in the impact investing community’s appetite for revenue-based financing structures (“RBFs”), from the “curious interest” that predominated in prior years to an increase in the number of investors that modeled, negotiated, and deployed RBFs for the first time.”

Opportunities for Gender Finance in Latin America: what can banks and MFIs do to service women entrepreneurs better? - FMO 2019

“Latin America has the highest concentration of women entrepreneurs in the world with about 40% of all SMEs being owned by women, totalling up to 1.4m women-owned SMEs. And yet, the region has also the second-highest failure rate of women-owned businesses globally.”

Impact Investing Handbook: An Implementation Guide for Practitioners. Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors - Briand, P. & Godeke, S. (2020)

“Why is a philanthropic service organization publishing a handbook on impact investing?Well, in part it’s because we hold an expansive definition of philanthropy. Like many, we see philanthropy as the voluntary use of private resources for public benefit. Nowhere does that concise formulation say this resource can only be money that’s donated.”

Innovations in Financing Structures for Impact Enterprises: Spotlight on Latin America - Andrea Armeni & Miguel Ferreyra De Bone (2017)

”Despite solid financial statements and demonstrable contributions to the economy and to society, many impact enterprises find it challenging to obtain capital that aligns with their needs and characteristics and enables their development and growth. This is particularly the case for impact enterprises in the early and growth stages.”

Internal Revenue Services (IRS) guidance on Program-Related Investing for US foundations

“Program-related investments (PRIs) are those in which:
- The primary purpose is to accomplish one or more of the foundation's exempt purposes,
- Production of income or appreciation of property is not a significant purpose, and
- Influencing legislation or taking part in political campaigns on behalf of candidates is not a purpose.”

The Studio Museum Harlem. (2019) Gagosian Quarterly, Spring 2019 Issue.

“Established in 1968, the Studio Museum in Harlem has served as a crucial institution in the development, presentation, and promotion of artists of African descent. With the museum now preparing for the construction of a new home, Gagosian’s Mark Francis spoke with Thelma Golden, director and chief curator, and Sir David Adjaye OBE, the project’s principal architect, about the building plans and the centrality of artists in their collaboration.”

Sixteen Major Donors and Foundations Commit Unprecedented $156 Million to Support Black, Latinx, Asian and Indigenous Arts Organizations. 24 September 2020

“Today, sixteen major donors and foundations announced an unprecedented commitment to a two-pronged national and regional initiative to recognize “America’s Cultural Treasures.” Together, the funders will grant more than $156 million to support Black, Latinx, Asian, and Indigenous arts organizations in response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic that has devastated America’s arts and culture landscape”

Chattopadhay, T. & Roy, M. 18 May 2017. Low-Fee Private Schools in India: The Emerging Fault Lines. Columbia University.

“In this paper, we provide a critical perspective on the complex reality of private education for the poor, focusing on the LFP schooling sector in India”

Faces of Budget Private School in India. (2018). Center for Civil Society.

“Over the last decade, we have achieved near universal enrollment in primary education. The rise in enrollment is partly due to the growth of private schools that have filled the ‘differentiated demand’ government schools were unable to satisfy. A significant portion of this demand is supported by BPS—small-medium size institutes that cater to the economically backward section and charge a low-fee from parents.”

Rangwala, R. 17 January 2018. A New Impact Investing Model for Education.

“As poor families in India increasingly turn to low-fee private schools, it’s critical that they deliver quality education and improve student learning outcomes. In a pilot initiative, we at the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation gave two leading school finance companies in India a variable interest loan, structured with financial incentives that encourage school leaders to improve learning.”

Social Impact Bonds - UK Government Guidance

“Introduction and guidance to developing Social Impact Bonds, information about sources of funding and available support. Social impact bonds (SIBs) are a commissioning tool that can enable organisations to deliver outcomes contracts and make funding for services conditional on achieving results. Social Investors pay for the project at the start, and then receive payments based on the results achieved by the project.”

Social Finance - Social Impact Bonds Database

“Social Finance is a not for profit organisation that partners with governments, service providers, the voluntary sector and the financial community to find better ways of tackling social problems in the UK and globally.”

Interactive database of social impact bonds around the world

Government Outcomes Lab at the University of Oxford

“We host the global knowledge hub for those considering, designing and delivering new approaches to improve social outcomes.”

Includes a basic introduction, a knowledge bank and a toolkit to help deliver a successful Impact Bond

Impact Bonds Series - Brookings Article Series

“The Center’s research has analyzed the potential of social and development impact bonds to address a wide range of intractable social challenges in high, middle, and low-income countries. The research also includes a particular focus on the achievement of early childhood development and education outcomes in the developing country context.”

Connecting finance to results: can emerging technologies make impact bonds more impactful? - Stratigos (2019)

“This report analyses the existing landscape of emerging technologies deployed in use cases relevant to results-based financing structures, including Remote Imagery, Distributed Ledger Technologies, Artificial Intelligence, and the Internet of Things to assess whether these technologies can play a role in making Impact Bonds more robust, cost-effective, efficient and transparent. “

Bringing Impact Bonds to the Global South, SSIR. - Patton, A. De Witt, S. (2015)

“Only one impact bond has launched in a developing country so far. Why? It seems fair to ask whether these instruments—with their complexity, stringent data requirements, and high transaction costs—are appropriate for the developing-world context.”

Nicholls, A., and Tomkinson, E. (2015), ‘The Peterborough Pilot Social Impact Bond’, in Nicholls, A., Paton, R., and Emerson, J. (eds), Social Finance, Oxford University Press

“This case study will examine the emergence, development and global variations of a new financing mechanism for welfare services, the Social Impact Bond (SIB). The case will define SIBs in their historical context and will explore the first, pilot, SIB in Peterborough in the UK in detail.”

Dynamic Persistence in UK Policy Making: The Evolution of Social Investment Ideas and Policy Instruments, Public Management Review - Nicholls, A., and Teasdale, S. (2020)

“This article explores the evolution of social investment, both as a policy solution and a set of policy instruments, during a period characterized by political turbulence.”

Better Outcomes, Better Value. The Evolution of Social Impact Bonds in the UK - Bridges Ventures Impact (2016)

“Social impact bonds (SIBs) are a tool to help impact-driven providers deliver these ‘outcomes contracts’, by giving them access to project financing and management support from socially-minded investors. For governments, this can broaden the pool of skilled providers and, potentially, increase the chances of the service being successful.”

Towards a New Social Economy: Blended Value Creation Through Social Impact Bonds, - Social Finance (2010)

”Social Impact Bonds are a unique funding mechanism in that they align the interests of key stakeholders around social outcome. We believe that Social Impact Bonds represent a significant step forward. However, they are also only one way of funding better social outcomes and may not be an appropriate funding mechanism for every social problem.”

Impact Bonds in Developing Countries: Early Learnings from the Field - Brookings Centre for Universal Education/Convergence. (2018)

“This report takes the field further forward, exploring the lessons learned in the development of impact bonds in low- and middle-income countries, bringing together the findings from interviews with stakeholders and research into the impact bond space conducted by the authors over the course of a year.”

Cooper, C., Graham, C., and Himick, D. (2016), ‘Social Impact Bonds: The Securitization of the Homeless’, Accounting, Organizations and Society 55, pp. 63-82

“This paper examines the recent phenomenon of social impact bonds (SIBs). Social impact bonds are an attempt to marketize/financialize certain contemporary, intractable “social problems”, such as homelessness and criminal recidivism. SIBs rely on a vast array of accounting technologies including budgets, future cash flows, discounting, performance measurement and auditing. As such, they represent a potentially powerful and problematic use of accounting to enact government policy.”

ACfA Label Framework. African Crowdfunding Association - Howard, E. & Mbengue, M. (2020)

“The African Crowdfunding Association (ACfA) is an industry association for the crowdfunding industry in Africa. We operate as a self-regulatory organisation (SRO) that promotes transparency and good governance in the crowdfunding industry.”

“The ACfA Label Framework is a comprehensive regulatory framework for securities-based crowdfunding in Africa.”

Employee ownership options: Find the right fit for your company - Project Equity

“Employee ownership is increasingly becoming the best succession plan for companies wanting to sustain their legacy and receive market value for the business they worked hard to build. There are several paths that lead to employee ownership, and choosing the best one will depend on your company size and ultimately your business goals.”

Steward Ownership: Rethinking Ownership in the 21st Century - Purpose Foundation

“This publication is intended to shed light on the different ways a company can incorporate accountability, mission integrity, and lasting independence into its ownership structure. We look at how steward-ownership enables companies to protect their values regarding the environment, society, and their employees in their legal DNA.”

“The Employee Ownership Association (EOA) represents organisations which are employee owned or transitioning to employee ownership across the UK. The EOA is a not for profit and politically independent organisation that works in close partnership with its members to champion, promote and provide insight into the business case for employee ownership. Members benefit from unique learning, networking and trading opportunities across the network of diverse companies of all sizes and sectors.”

Financing for Social Impact: The Key Role of Tailored Financing and Hybrid Finance. - EVPA (2017)

“The EVPA report “Financing for Social Impact | The Key Role of Tailored Financing and Hybrid Finance” provides an overview of how to tailor the financial instruments to the needs of the social purpose organisations, by looking at pros and cons of each FI and selecting the ones that are the most suitable, based on the business model and the stage of development of the SPOs.”