Publication database

The GALI team consistently hears questions from accelerators and others in the field about financial sustainability. In this brief, we ask: How do accelerators fund their programs, and how do different funding profiles relate to different accelerator offerings?

This report by the European Venture Philanthropy Association (EVPA) 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 financial instrument and selecting the ones that are the most suitable. The EVPA report also presents examples from the emerging field of hybrid finance, which helps bring more resources to developing societal solutions and increase the effectiveness in financing social purpose organisations.

This report highlights how traditional debt and equity financing structures often fail to adequately meet the needs of early-stage impact enterprises. It examines the pain points for both investors and entrepreneurs around traditional structures and the need for innovative instruments, provides examples of emerging and proven models, from revenue-based mezzanine debt to self-liquidating equity, and offers suggestions for concrete steps to advance the adoption of alternative structures to foster impact enterprises. 16 case studies from throughout Latin America aim to offer an overview of innovations both at the deal level and at the capital aggregation level, where holding companies and open-ended funds have proven to be potentially well suited for this space.

The study (i) reviews the definitions and concepts of social enterprises, (ii) outlines the landscape across 10 selected countries in Asia and Latin America, (iii) discusses challenges to scaling as faced by social enterprises, and (iv) presents suggestions for development banks to extend support to social enterprises through public and private sector investments. The study categorizes social enterprises and argues that the comparative advantage of development banks is to support selected social enterprises that are commercially bankable and have the base of the pyramid (BOP) at the core of their business operations. Development banks can support these enterprises—considered as the inclusive businesses of the future—through investing in impact funds and/or public sector loans.

According to the Startup India Action Plan, 2016, one of the major challenges is the failure of most startups during the initial five years due to lack of either funds or management skills. Therefore, developing a conducive environment becomes crucial to support start-ups during their initial years of operations. This handbook is an endeavour to provide insight on several models that could be explored to set up a fund to promote start-ups, contributions to which would qualify as CSR spend under the Section 135 of the Companies Act, 2013.

This report provides case studies and lessons learned from seven Asian countries in five areas of innovative financing for development. Such innovative financing for development would benefit inclusive businesses as a new source of funding.

This working paper aims to expand the evidence-base around the potential for blended finance to narrow the SDG funding gap. It provides an analysis of Convergence's dataset of nearly 200 blended finance transactions which have mobilised more than $50 billion towards sustainable development. The analysis shows that the number of blended finance deals is increasing each year. The working paper also provides a useful map of the key organisations active in the blended finance ecosystem (including private investors, multilateral and bilateral development banks and donors).

This paper is part of a series of papers on inclusive agribusiness written for the “Towards a Global Research and Learning Agenda for Inclusive Agribusiness” workshop in March 2017. This issue outlines the research questions around the gap between the financial needs of smallholders and the supply of financial services. It identifies the areas where action is needed and gives an overview of the ongoing projects and actors that promote the smallholder finance agenda.

This note gives an overview of major business partnership funds and facilities that are publicised on donor agency websites, and that include economic or private sector development among their objectives. To allow for more focus and clarity, the note does not review facilities offering finance for infrastructure development or other forms for public-private collaboration, such as dialogue, advocacy or knowledge sharing.

This brief takes an in-depth look at the application, benefits, and scalability of financial guarantees in impact investing. The study outlines how guarantees have been used to date in U.S. community investing, what challenges have been associated with their use, and what opportunities exist to use guarantees at greater scale to support communities and the environment.