Understanding mechanisms in the social investment market: what are venture philanthropy funds financing and how?

Abstract

In recent years, a social investment market with specialized intermediaries and social investors has developed with an increasing amount of available capital. This paper focuses on venture philanthropy funds as new financial intermediaries and studies some characteristics of the investees. The empirical analysis is based on a unique data set of 342 social investments from five continents over the last 17 years. Three main findings are notable. First, the investees' organizational and beneficiary characteristics determine their access to financial resources. Second, a model including investees' organizational and beneficiary characteristics strongly predicts grant versus commercial financing outcome. Third, the venture capital nature of venture philanthropy funds can be recognized from their financing instrument decision-making. Based on these findings, this paper contributes to the emerging field of social investment.

Keywords:

• impact investment
• social finance
• social returns