It has certainly drawn a lot of capacity, bringing with it ups and downs. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the investors paid a lot of attention to our impact this time around. Before we became a non-profit in 2016, we tended to deal with commercial investors who did not understand the core of our model and saw the social aspect as a marketing gimmick. In this respect, it was a very nice experience to find impact investors who share our vision and for whom we do not have to bend.
Did you also face any concerns?
What surprised us a lot is that many investors are not yet ready for impact investing. They are interested in it, but act more according to the motto: either donate and the money is gone, or invest and then earn real money. The great thing about impact investing is that you can generate social impact more than once with one euro. That's what we liked about working with FASE: the investors in the network already understood the principle. In addition, we and the other FASE clients inspire people to overcome this mental and sometimes administrative hurdle. We have funding partners who have told us that they would like to make an impact investment instead of a donation in the next round of funding.
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