The Impactory

Pieter Oostlander was a guest speaker at the Impactory and he introduced the set-up of a social investment fund focusing on the Benelux. He also explained how EVPA operates around venture philantropy and Impact Investing.

Here are some key topics we explored and discussed about with the group which participated, who was mainly composed of multidisciplinary professionals in finance, training, academia and entrepreneurship.

Mr Oostlaner drew the parallell between risk, return and impact. He explained that Venture Philantropy investments work to build a stronger investee organization with a societal purpose providing both financial and non-financial support (advice, coaching, contacts, etc). Most people are not aware that venture philantropy and impact investing approaches include the use of the entire spectrum of financial instruments available (grants, equits, debt, etc) and it’s specificity is that it pays a particular attention to the ultimate objective of achieving social impact. The main different therefore lies in putting social impact before financial returns.

The main question arising at this stage is the one on definition. Throughout academia, experts, beginners, practitioners, there seems to exist the need of a clear definition: What exactly is Venture Philantropy and how does it differ from Impact Investing and other forms of investing for social purposes? The EVPA model defining Venture Philantropy and Impact Investment clearly illustrates the differences through a very simple diagram showing “finance first strategies” – where the financial return is maximized and the societal impact is secondary – and “impact first strategies” where societal impact comes first and financial return is secondary. In between these two extremes we can find a wide range of forms of investment including the venture philantropy scope and the newer term of “Impact Investment”, which includes both impact first and finance first strategies.