You might not know it, but NGOs have been involved in impact investing for about a decade. Today we look at what they’ve learned.
Methods vary — from investing their own money, like Heifer International, to partnering with existing funds, such as NatureVest’s work on standards for investment manager ThirdWay Partners. Save the Children Global Ventures invested in ThinkMD, for instance, which helps community health workers with technology to diagnose patients.
The idea is that NGOs’ large global networks, with expertise and relationships on the ground, can help companies scale. Still, that has not happened as often as NGOs may have hoped, as my colleague Adva Saldinger writes.