Impact Consulting
There is a whole category of capital most founders never approach, because nobody told them it was for companies like theirs.
A founder building a mental-wellness app for schools is not, to a foundation, an ed-tech company. A profitable agri-processing business at growth stage does not have to raise from the impact fund that found it first; there is larger capital available once the case is made. In both conversations the gap is the same: the founder does not know which kind of investor to approach, or how that investor will read them.
That gap has two halves. The first is capital: impact funds, blended structures, foundations, development finance, and the grants and schemes that sit beside them, each with its own thesis and its own way of judging a company. The second is execution: impact measurement, which is the reporting these funders require and the pain point founders most often underestimate.
There are firms that specialise in impact measurement and firms that raise impact capital. What is rare is one team that does strategy, capital and execution for the same company. That is the practice on this page, and it is available to startups and MSMEs alike.
What our research says about Impact Consulting
Is there a genuine gap that patient or concessional capital is justified in filling, because commercial money, left alone, would not have served this segment? If ordinary capital already flows here freely, no foundation will subsidise it.
Also from this practice
Impact assessment toolkit
The measurement frame a funder will accept, before you have a measurement function.
A working set of outcome definitions, indicators, baselines and a reporting template, built for your theory of change and for the funders you are actually approaching. It is assembled for each company rather than downloaded, which is why it is a request rather than a file. Tell us the mission and the stage and we will say what it would cover.
Ask for the toolkitRoutes that sit alongside
Grants and schemes
Government grants and schemes sit beside impact capital and fund the same kind of company. The register is searchable by stage and sector.
Go thereBlended capital under Borrow
The debt and blended structures desk, for a company whose route is a facility rather than a fund.
Go there
Led by
Lead - Growth & Partnerships, Impact Consulting
The people behind Impact Consulting
From the practice
What we have published on Impact Consulting
Impact Reporting Never Ends: Make It an Asset
About four months after the round closes, an email arrives with a reporting template and forty fields nobody tracks. Impact measurement runs for as long as the money does, and built properly, it's one of the more useful assets a company can own.
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Funding Affordable Healthcare in India
Health access attracts more patient capital in India than almost any other theme. It's also where the qualification test bites hardest, because a lot of Indian healthcare is already commercially fundable, and patient money has no business going there.
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Who Actually Funds This: A Founder's Map
Most founders can name twenty venture funds and none of the institutions built to fund exactly what they're building. Here are the five families of impact capital, how each behaves, and which door is usually the right one.
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