DISA 2016 | Global Partnerships
Global Partnerships was awarded the 2016 Distinction in International Service Award (DISA) by the students and staff of the Martin Institute.
Global Partnerships is an impact-first investor dedicated to expanding opportunity for people living in poverty. They make loans and early stage investments in social enterprises that deliver market-based products and services that empower people to earn a living and improve their lives.
From Global Partnerships:
"Impact-first investing means investing in a way that seeks the highest possible social impact, while seeking to preserve capital with a modest financial return for investors. Impact-first investing is distinctly different from return-first investing, which seeks the highest possible financial return (often without consideration of social or environmental consequences), and from philanthropy, which seeks the highest social impact without any preservation of capital.
"We believe that impact-first investing has an essential role to play in advancing sustainable solutions to poverty for millions of people worldwide. All of our impact-first investing is aimed at empowering poor and marginalized people to earn a living, provide the basic necessities of life for their families, and improve their lives."
We seek social impact on four dimensions:
- Broader Opportunity – We have a holistic understanding of poverty, so we invest across all facets of poverty: livelihoods, education, energy, health, housing, sanitation and water.
- Deeper Inclusion – We invest at the edge of the market, emphasizing approaches that include people marginalized by depth of poverty, gender and/or geography, including women and the rural poor.
- Serving Millions – We believe that every person matters, and want to expand opportunity for as many people as possible. We therefore focus on sustainable approaches that can, over time, scale to serve millions of people living in poverty.
- Improving Lives – We only invest where evidence convinces us that people living in poverty value the opportunity being delivered and are empowered by it – economically or otherwise – to improve their lives."
