Shared Impact

We invested in the inaugural fund for Apis & Heritage Capital Partners (A&H), an impact-focused private equity firm that tackles the nation’s racial wealth gap by using the tools and best practices of employee ownership. A&H buys great small- and medium-sized businesses with significant workforces of color then converts those companies to 100% employee-owned, enabling workers of color with the opportunity to build wealth, communities with the opportunity to preserve jobs, and founding owners with the opportunity to exit responsibly.

Led by visionary animal protection advocate Mindi Callison, Bailing Out Benji is dedicated to ending puppy mills and inhumane dog breeding. We support Bailing Out Benji as they reveal the relationship between puppy mills and the pet stores and websites that sell puppies. Their research, as well as their associated awareness and advocacy efforts, have already helped pass legislation nationwide that regulates the sale of puppies.

We support Beam, formerly Edquity, an anti-poverty technology platform that helps students and low-income people improve financial security by receiving emergency funding and accessing resources that help them meet basic needs. Founded by David Helene, a former education nonprofit executive, Beam has distributed over $100M in emergency aid to 100,000 students across the nation.

We support The Broadway Advocacy Coalition (BAC), a fellowship designed to help artist-activists make a positive impact on the world. BAC’s inaugural cohort focused on Black women addressing issues related to systemic racism and criminal justice reform.

Photo Credit: Lee Wexler

CARE is the first national, Black-led animal welfare organization amplifying the voices of BIPOC leaders in the animal welfare sector and furthering community-driven solutions.

Sharif El-Mekki founded The Center for Black Educator Development to dramatically increase the number of Black educators nationwide, ensuring that students have diverse teacher representation throughout their time in school. One of two original funders, we have worked alongside Sharif and his organization to help secure millions in additional funding. We continue to champion the Center as they scale their impact and reach.

We are backing a network of women, minority and BIPOC-led funds that increase equitable access to capital for underrepresented founders and companies. By fostering mutually enriching relationships, we work to shape investor mindsets and promote greater wealth generation for founders and funders who are increasing diversity in entrepreneurship. Our partners include Urban Innovation Fund, Reach Capital, Ruthless for Good, Plain Sight Capital, Debut Capital, Genius Guild Greenhouse Fund, RareBreed Ventures, Impact America Fund, Innovate Capital Growth Fund, Apis & Heritage and Founders First Capital Partners.

Founders First Capital Partners helps support small businesses led by women, people of color, LGBTQ+, military veterans and companies in low to moderate income areas by offering revenue-based funding. This funding is more flexible than traditional bank debt, allowing for payments to vary based on monthly revenue, and it helps minimize the use of predatory loan products. Founders First’s innovative performance platform provides structured growth education, coaching, financial health and post-funding advisory, along with operating and execution support, to position diverse-led companies for premium-wage job creation. A Series A investor in Founders First Capital Partners, Spring Point Partners also partnered with founder Kim Folsom to bring their innovative platform to the Philadelphia and South Jersey region.

We provided support to the San Diego Regional Policy & Innovation Center and Greenprint Partners, who cofounded the Green Infrastructure Accelerator. This program helps diverse public sector leaders create and apply for federal grants focused on community-driven green infrastructure projects.

We provide ongoing support to The Green Infrastructure Leadership Exchange, a member-led network of emerging municipal leaders. The members of the Exchange work together to develop resources and share innovative ideas for expanding climate-resilient stormwater management in ways that meet community needs.

We partner closely with a core group of Philadelphia-area nonprofits that apply a strengths-based approach to youth development. Core grantees include Covenant House PA, The Crefeld School, Healing Hurt People (at Drexel University), Hopeworks ‘N Camden, SpeakUp!, Students Run Philly Style, YouthBuild Philly, and the Youth Sentencing & Reentry Project. Together, we’re working to strengthen Philadelphia’s youth development ecosystem and support our shared impact goals.

We are proud of a longstanding partnership with the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), providing general operating support to the organization. As the largest LGBTQ advocacy group and political lobbying organization in the U.S., HRC empowers its 3 million members and supporters to mobilize against attacks on marginalized people. HRC protects and expands rights for LGBTQ individuals by advocating for same-sex marriage, anti-discrimination and hate crimes legislation, and HIV/AIDS advocacy.

We support economic justice through Just Income GNV, a guaranteed income project by Community Spring that provides temporary, unconditional monthly payments directly to people impacted by the justice system – no strings attached. The project is based on the belief that a guaranteed income can mitigate known barriers to successful reentry and unlock the inherent potential of our justice-impacted neighbors. This pilot, designed and administered by formerly incarcerated people, provided 115 justice-impacted people with monthly payments for a year.

Home ownership is a major challenge for essential professionals who can’t afford to live in or close to the communities they serve. Our partners at Landed tackle this problem by making investor capital accessible to help educators, healthcare professionals, and government workers who are buying homes in high-cost markets.

We partner with Level Forward, an entertainment company that serves as a leader in narrative change. In pursuit of equity and economic transformation, they expand opportunity in media by elevating new voices behind still-invisible narratives and shaping systems to vest a broader group of stakeholders. They work on the project-level to make decisions about their work differently and work system-wide to break down bottlenecks of financing, production, and distribution in iterative, repeatable, open-sourced ways.

We partner with Neuroflow, a digital health company that integrates behavioral health support at scale. Founded by Chris Molaro, an army combat veteran, and Adam Pardes, NeuroFlow currently enables hundreds of leading health plans, provider-led organizations, and the US military to support the behavioral health needs of over 14M individuals.

With our partners Lemonada and Neighborhood Villages, we sponsored the “No One Is Coming to Save Us” podcast, featuring actress Kristen Bell, to raise awareness of America’s childcare crisis and inspire people to take action. Our support of Lemonada also extends to several other podcasts in their women-run network, which shares the unfiltered version of the human experience to build radical empathy.

The Philadelphia Center for Gun Violence Reporting was launched to explore the hypotheses that changing the practice of news reporting can prevent gun violence. Since then, their research has refined this focus by identifying harmful reporting practices, asking what best practices would look like and how they could be implemented. We partner with the Center as they support voices from the community, publish research that informs best practices and build networks of journalists who believe we can all do better, make a difference and stop the violence.

As part of our work in narrative change, we partner with Resolve Philly, an unconventional journalism organization that challenges the industry to be more equitable, collaborative, and based in community voices and solutions. Resolve Philly’s initiatives offer opportunities for journalists to report collaboratively and more accurately, to better reach and serve their communities, and to create practices rooted in equity.

We’re proud to support founder Aaron T. Walker as he connects innovative women, nonbinary and BIPOC change makers with nurturing mentorship and capital. He and his team have invested $5M in 100+ leaders through the Camelback Fellowship. Through the Ruthless for Good Fund they are investing in 25 pre-seed and seed stage companies. The founders they support are leading the way in education, the future of work, and improving access to opportunity and well-being for historically under-invested communities.

Our partners at SimpleLab launched after the discovery of lead in Flint, MI drinking water, and a realization that fewer than 1 in 10,000 American homes had ever tested their tap water. Recognizing the ways in which home water testing was a challenge for most people, they pioneered an award-winning service (MyTapScore.com) to simplify the process of water sampling, lab testing and report-back. SimpleLab software subsequently expanded to include accessibility features for commercial partners to access professional environmental lab testing and data services by API.

We supported the launch of The Water Innovation Leadership Development (WILD) program at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment, which helps empower the next generation of utility leaders to embrace transformative practices and implement innovative, equitable solutions to water infrastructure challenges.

Wildflower is a national network of Montessori schools with a central commitment to equity. Wildflower Schools are small, teacher-led schools deeply embedded in the local community. We supported the expansion of Wildflower Schools to the Philadelphia area, with the goal of making an inclusive Montessori education affordable and accessible.

We are convening and funding a cohort of community-based programs in Philadelphia that seek alternatives to the justice system for young people. These programs are working closely with local system partners to define and develop innovative approaches to youth justice.