Build a Workshop

Are you interested in diving deeper into impact finance?

The innovative financing space is changing rapidly. Yet, impact funders and social entrepreneurs often approach deals and funds without a comprehensive understanding of the types of options available to them to de-risk, embed impact and leverage resources effectively. We can design a workshop for your organization or affiliated organizations to understand the landscape of innovative financing and impact tech or to dive into specific pieces of the landscape and structures.

Here are a few things that people have said about our workshops in the past:

“It was an incredible tour of what the cutting edge of impact finance looks like around the world. Unlike 90% of impact investing presentations, the workshop talked about real deal structures with details from actual term sheets - there's no better way to learn.” - Rares Pamfil, Vice President, Impact Investing, Barclays

“Massive learning curve into the depth and breadth of Innovative Financing tools and I thought I knew a bit. Every investor/fund manager, regardless of explicit impact intent or not, should be well versed in these pioneering investment instruments and how they prove out.” - Tamara Giltsoff, Former Head of Innovation, DFID

“Thank you for all your fabulous work in bringing the latest innovative finance tools in one place and your generosity to make them so accessible. A must workshop for every Impact investor and entrepreneur.” - Shideh Haradian, Director of Sales and Business Development, Fluor Corporation

“Thank you for an information packed accessible and inspirational day. Definitely suffering from information overload in the best possible way! You provided a knowledge base in one day that would have taken months, if not years, to acquire. What I learned from you is invaluable for me as a social entrepreneur - thank you!” - Orianna Fielding, Social Entrepreneur

Below are a few off the shelf options for workshops that can be delivered anywhere in the world. We also can design and deliver bespoke workshops for your organization or for a collection of organizations from 2 hours to 5 days. Please contact us for more details or set-up a 15 minute call here to discuss.

Introduction to Impact Investing (1 - 3 hours)

In this session, we will examine the landscape of impact finance and understand how it fits into the new investment continuum. We will cover key definitions and stakeholders in Impact Finance and look at the types of products used by practitioners. Finally, participants will be introduced to the concept of the impact axis, which sits alongside risk and return in assessing a project, company or fund’s projections and performance. We will discuss the standardization of the impact axis and how different types of impact investors and innovative financiers assess risk in individual ways. We will go through different risk profiles to understand how funders apply this risk / return / impact logic.

Themes of Impact (1.5 - 2 hours)

In this session we will explore the themes of impact including Access to: Health, Housing, Finance and Education; Water, Hygiene and Sanitation and Renewables and Clean Tech. We will look at the opportunities for investment into these theme areas and examples of impact funds in these areas including debt, equity, fund of funds.

Introduction to Impact Measurement and Management and Impact Tech (1 - 3 hours)

This session will focus on the Impact Measurement frameworks inherent in innovative finance. It will focus on impact measurement from the investor level and from the organizational level. We will look at some of the issues around impact measurement and the current discourse in the space. We will also discuss the future of Impact Measurement using technology such as blockchain, artificial intelligence, Internet of things and satellite imagery.

Introduction to Innovative Financing (1 - 3 hours)

Pricing Impact (2 - 3 hours)

This session will look at examples of how to price impact. Participants will run an excel simulation to build a portfolio of optimized impact.

Innovative Resourcing (3 - 6 hours)

Innovative Financing (IF) is an approach to funding enterprises and interventions that create positive social and environmental impact. It looks to use all available financial and philanthropic tools to support the growth of these enterprises and, when the existing tools don’t work, it promptly creates new ones. In this session, we are going to focus on the resources that can be utilized by entrepreneurs and funders to achieve social and environmental outcomes. The primary goal of this session is to get participants to think creatively about their assets, revenue streams and funding sources. The class will work to create strategies using these categories for several cases of non-profits, social enterprises, governments, development organizations and investment funds. For more information on innovative revenue streams see the videos from the Innovative Financing MOOC on Coursera:

Introduction to Week 3 (1:24)

Identifying Revenue Streams – Part 1 (3:23)

Identifying Revenue Streams – Part 2 (7:36)

Innovative Financing for Early Stage Companies (6 - 8 hours - can be up to 2 days)

From impact-linked loans to demand dividends, there’s a whole set of innovative structures between equity and debt that can be customised to fit your needs. The next generation of early-stage funding in the impact space, these structures have a brand new approach to addressing issues around founder ownership, funder impact preferences, affordability of capital, exits and more. This full-day workshop will introduce you to the full range of alternative early stage instruments. You’ll learn best practices around structuring, term sheet language, negotiations and valuations, and will see learnings from funders and fundees to help you understand the pros and cons of different structures. You’ll leave with a course pack of resources on term sheets and deal structures, with pre-course resources also available for those new to early-stage financing.

This be broken down into smaller sections including:

Introduction to quasi-equity instruments: bridging the divide between debt and equity for SMEs

Outcomes linked instruments: Linking impact into capital allocation in funds and deals

Catalytic Capital: moving towards deep impact in impact investing - (6 - 8 hours - can be up to 2 days)

Are you a foundation, a family office or a development funder that is keen to understand how best to use your resources to catalyse deep impact? This workshop will walk through the full spectrum of options for catalytic capital including guarantees, first loss capital, outcomes payments, convertible grants and loans, syndication, technical assistance, evergreen funds, impact carry, advanced market commitments and more. These tools can be used effectively to increase access to funding, decrease costs of capital and incentivize impact through de-risking, crowding in, reducing borrowing costs and tying impact to capital allocation.

Emerging Technologies for Impact (1 - 2 days)

The opportunities to use emerging technologies for impact is growing at a breakneck pace. Across the globe, mobile payments, satellite imagery, 3-D printing, Internet-of-Things (IoT), the blockchain and artificial intelligence are being used to address the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by creating access to financial inclusion, education, renewable energy, healthcare, water and sanitation and more. Unfortunately, many social enterprises and investors are hesitant to dive into the opportunities (and challenges) that these technologies present around impact.

This one to two day training that will give participants an introductory knowledge of a range of emerging technologies, examine case studies from across impact sectors on the application of technologies and use design thinking frameworks to work through how to apply the learnings to their own social impact organizations.