Impact investing is complicated. How do you balance impact and investment returns, local vs. global impact, 17 Sustainable Development Goals, debt, equity, and revenue-sharing? All while deciding whether to invest from your savings, your family office, or your foundation or donor-advised fund?
Realize Impact is here to help make impact investing easy. We know how to make impact investments, create impact, and then harvest the investment returns. What we are looking for are your recommendations for impactful investments, and the capital to make those investments.
All it takes are three simple steps:
Make a grant from your donor-advised fund, foundation, or your own funds, recommending an impact investment
Realize Impact does the diligence, reviews the terms, and makes the debt, equity or revenue-based investment.
We donate 99% of the investment returns to your recommended DAF, foundation or other 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
Or in other words, you do the easy parts and we’ll do the complicated parts. When you find a good impact investment, tell us about it. We’ll spread the word so that others can join in too, helping catalyze your capital into yet more impact. Later, if the investment turns out to be fruitful, we’ll put almost all of those returns into a donor-advised fund, foundation, or charity, so it can do even more good for the world,–or give us a new suggestion and we’ll invest that capital again and again and again.
We do this for one low flat fee:
$500 for investments
of $10,000 or more.
* There is no fee for investments under $10,000, but the investment returns will not be re-donated.
See the details on the Philanthropic Investment Grant or fill out our PHIG Recommendation form to get started.
See the FAQ to answer the most frequently asked questions about this service.
And yes, the service is as simple as it sounds, by design.
February 2020, just before the pandemic was daily news, Realize Impact launched it’s philanthropic investment service. At the time we had just one signed partner, Seattle Foundation. In February we quietly launched, informing just a few people in the impact investing industry. By June, over $1.1 million of capital had flowed through the service from a few dozen donor/investors into five...
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The 86Fund is an emergency fund that aids independent restaurants—with priority given to those owned by women and minorities—facing unprecedented hardship during the global pandemic. Support Restaurants According to Yelp, as reported in ReBusinessonline in September, 61 percent of San Francisco restaurants that closed due to COVID will not reopen. A gift through the 86Fund will provide vital...
In addition to our off-the-shelf service that lets anyone turn philanthropic capital into an impact investment, this year Realize Impact now also operates three philanthropic investment funds for three partners. The Decarbon8-US fund is for those who believe in the power of entrepreneurship and technology and wonder what more they can do to mitigate climate change. Created in partnership...
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Denkyem provides access to affordable loans for black-owned businesses in the Puget Sound region (a.k.a. the Seattle Metropolitan Area). The loan terms are simple and unique: This is a black-owned business serving black-owned businesses, started in partnership with one of Seattle’s most active early-stage investors: Realize Impact provided a recoverable grant to Denkyem, providing them some...
Three months ago Realize Impact lent $105,804 to the Colorado Lending Source to provide them capital for the SBA’s Payroll Protection Plan loans (the “PPP”). Late last month, we were paid back, with interest. You’ve most likely read about the PPP loans in the news. This is a fund to make those loans possible to more Main Street businesses. What the news stories...
Realize Impact launched its Philanthropic Investment Grant service in the last few days of February, 2020. The purpose was to make it easy for anyone with a donor advised fund, private foundation, or any donor to turn philanthropic giving into impact investments. $1,100,000+ Donors love that simplicity. In its first three months, over $1,100,000 of new impact investments have been made, into five...
The coronavirus pandemic brings more than a healthcare crisis to Africa, it brings disruptions to the food supply chain that will likely cause widespread hunger and starvation. The food system is already far from ideal, with (at least) 40% of that food never being eaten due to post-harvest losses (Rockefeller Foundation studies). Adding to these issues are the friction of closed borders...
The Truss Fund is provides emergency, 0% interest loansof up to $100,000 to market-driven social enterprisesaiming to end global poverty and protect the planet. The Fund is designed for enterprises that have beenespecially hard-hit by the pandemic, and who are graduatesof the GBSI Accelerator at Miller Center. The Truss Fund is managed by Beneficial Returns, an impact investment debt fund that...