What We Do
We use Business Rigor
Our mission is to grow viable businesses that generate sustainable earnings or savings for people with low incomes in Africa, Asia and Latin America Please check out our recently released 2015 Annual Report for a summary of our past year here. 2008: GBF split from IFC and became an independent non-profit which continued investing in – and providing advisory services to – high-impact businesses in Latin America, Asia and Africa. GBF also wins the G20 SME Challenge. A donor-funded non-profit organization: The Grassroots Business Partners, GBF’s non-profit arm, provides fund management services for GBI-I, provides business advisory services to the fund’s investees, and works to build the field of impact investing by providing insights on lesson learned, impact measurement methodologies, and its model. The fund and non-profit combine to deliver a blend of capital and support suitable for long-term investment in businesses that provide opportunities to low income people. GBF invests in High-Impact Businesses, which we define as those generating sustainable economic benefits for large numbers of the poor. They tend to have complicated business models and supply chains, but are generally underdeveloped in management, operations and planning. Our model of providing patient capital and Business Advisory Services (BAS) as a hybrid investment helps address the issues facing these businesses by providing long term flexible capital for investment and supporting skill building to improve business growth and increase lasting social impact. Already, there are signs that our model of risk sharing capital, BAS and high-touch engagement help our clients improve their operations, build stronger businesses and create sustained social impact, As of March 31, 2016: Learn more in our 2015 Annual Report All of our investees receive customized BAS support, mostly concentrating on strengthening financial management, operations, and strategy. GBF provides BAS for a limited time during the early stages of our engagement with investees. We try to support catalytic BAS projects that help our clients grow to scale, become commercially sustainable, and create social impact. GBF designs, executes, and monitors BAS in conjunction with our investment work. Our regional offices lead the efforts to manage and deliver BAS both directly and through third-party consultants. We have a strong, growing network of senior experts and advisers in each of our regions working closely with our investees to build internal capacity and drive high-level change programs. These advisers include agribusiness supply chain experts, financial managers, entrepreneurs, investors, and other business experts. In addition to our advisers, each region has at least one full time portfolio-level consultant working closely with investees on narrower issues such as cash flow management, environmental certification and risk mitigation. Learn more about BAS projects in our BAS factsheet BAS has helped ensure achievement of client growth potential by focusing on business fundamentals, anticipating and mitigating key risks, and taking advantage of key opportunities. In addition to showing healthy financial performance, investees have also, on average, improved along key business capability dimensions that aid investment success. As of March 2016:
Our History
Hybrid Model
Portfolio
GBF focuses on for-profit companies that have the potential to achieve significant social impact
Business Advisory Services (BAS)
GBF is funded by an active and dedicated group of investors and donors, who have helped shape GBF’s approach. The list below includes major donors and investors since 2008.
Donors to the Non-Profit:
Investors in the Fund:
