High Impact Funding for the Field of Gender Finance

What can development actors, philanthropists and foundations do to support the field of gender lens investing? Suzanne Biegel lists seven high impact strategic levers that could have an exponential impact on the movement of gender lens capital globally. Yet, as with any systems change work, the outputs and outcomes can be harder to quantify - which is why they are perfectly suited to the kind of catalytic capital that philanthropy and foundations provide. 

Lever One: Research

This could be academia, a specialist consultancy, or a thematic initiative by a non-profit. Examples include the Canadian government (through IDRC) supporting research on care economy opportunities, Tara Health Foundation supporting research into reproductive and maternal health in the US, or Wharton Social Impact Initiative’s Project SAGE, supported by VISA Foundation (full disclosure: I’m part of the research team). The gender lens investing evidence base has come a long way in the last few years, but research will continue to be needed across every asset class, market, and investment theme. 

Lever Two: Field Building Organisations

While there is some overlap with research, more broadly these organisations connect, curate, and convene the people moving capital. Yes, GenderSmart is one of these, but there are plenty of others including Criterion Institute, ANDE, GIIN, AVPN, and other regional equivalents, who are all doing great work to influence the movement of capital with a gender lens on a significant scale. 

Lever Three: Incubators, Accelerators, and Support Networks

There are dozens of incubators and accelerators focused on women entrepreneurs (eg Global InvestHer, DigitalUndivided, 2X Invest2Impact), or building the gender lens investing capacity of investors and fund managers (eg Getting GenderSmart at DUKE, NextWave, VC Include Fellowship for BIPOC Fund Managers), many of which also have a regional or sectoral/thematic focus. These deliver more measurable outcomes - you can count how many people completed the programme - which is probably why they’ve been better funded to date than some of the other things on this list. It’s also worth saying that to date most of the effort has focused on ‘fixing’ the women entrepreneurs; arguably we need to put more effort into fixing the capital by educating investors and allocators. 

Lever Four: Media and Storytelling 

Many in the GenderSmart community agree that one path to change and influence is how well we're telling these investment stories through the media. Finance could be used to sponsor a thematic series on gender lens investing, backing women entrepreneurs, or any other angle you could think of that would make gender finance more visible in the mainstream, and ensure diverse representation of voices. You could do this by directly supporting a media organisation (eg Impact Alpha, Devex) or a field builder supporting entrepreneurs or fund managers to do better storytelling themselves, and amplifying their successes. 

Lever Five: Tools, Frameworks, and Standards

I’ve split this out from research because it’s about developing broader tools and data that can be used to benchmark and move the field forward at scale. Philanthropic capital has been used for years to develop standards on all kinds of things, whether it's sustainable seafood, fair trade chocolate, or gender lens investing. Several development actors including FCDO, SDC, GAC, and USAID have already injected significant capital into this latter area. But the money that’s been invested in standards around gender pales in significance to the investment in climate standards. Beyond this, we need to build the ability for the gender lens investing community to integrate into standards and conversations around mainstream ESG finance - that is non existent and really needed right now. 

Lever Six: Early Stage and Blended Capital (including Technical Assistance)

Since the term venture philanthropy was coined in 1969, philanthropic capital has proved its power in building the market with early adopters including Skoll Foundation, Schwab Foundation, UBS Optimus Foundation, and others leading the way. MacArthur’s C3 (Catalytic Capital Consortium) has demonstrated the power of collaboration between foundations, and while they don’t have an explicit gender focus, this is easily translatable to gender finance. Whether it’s providing capital for a pre-investable early stage entrepreneur or fund, or being first to invest in an emerging manager who doesn’t meet traditional track record requirements, this is a direct way to have an impact on the field. Development agencies, in particular DFAT and USAID, have been leaders in this area. See also Convergence.Finance, who seed, catalyse, and track blended capital transactions around the world. Finally, providing the technical assistance layer of an investment is one of the most valuable ways to increase the effectiveness of an investment with support on gender integration, M&E, and training for those involved. 

Lever Seven: Policy Development

Another way to have an impact on the investment of gender lens capital is to focus on policy. For example, Landesa’s work around land title ownership, which has been a serious obstacle to women’s economic empowerment because it means they don’t have collateral which they can use to get a bank loan. Helping an entrepreneur with a great solution to thrive may need a policy change to unlock the whole market. You could be that funder. If you want to know what examples of good looks like in this area, see AVPN’s Policy Lab, Criterion’s Power of Policy program, or Apolitical.