Crafting a worldwide technique for influence funding at Acumen

Agriculture and influence investing might look like unlikely bedfellows, however investing in sustainable agriculture is essential for addressing lots of the world’s social and environmental challenges. In 2021, nonprofit investing agency Acumen employed Christopher Wayne, previously of GrowNYC, as affiliate director to construct a brand new international influence technique for impact-focused agriculture.

I not too long ago linked with Wayne to be taught extra about his expertise at Acumen thus far. He spoke of how he made an immediate reference to colleagues at Acumen, how his sector-specific experience outweighed his lack of a finance background and what abilities are essential to finishing up his day-to-day function. 

Shannon Houde: Are you able to inform us what led you to make the transfer from GrowNYC to Acumen? 

Christopher Wayne: Being anyplace for 12 years is a very long time. I would been in 4 completely different positions and ended up in a director’s function. That was about as excessive as I may go. I’d spent seven years working arduous and creating a core set of programming and rising that in a means that I used to be actually happy with. However I used to be completely prepared for a change, to broaden my influence and leverage the data that I’d gained for a much bigger platform. However after being 12 years in a single group, I had barely misplaced the power to explain my abilities and promote myself. So, it was essential for me to acknowledge that I had abilities that had been invaluable out there. 

Houde: And now you’ve been there over a 12 months, what are you doing day after day at Acumen? 

Wayne: I spent the primary 12 months right here constructing an agricultural technique for the group. Acumen has been investing in agriculture for 18 years however was searching for a brand new, international technique that constructed off that basis. So I spent a very long time digging again by means of our investments, pulling out insights, talking to an enormous vary of various inner and exterior stakeholders and studying quite a lot of whitepapers and analysis to compile all of it right into a spreadsheet. I then used that to pitch completely different methods out to the C-suite and regional groups, and Acumen was cool sufficient to present me time to overlook the mark a pair occasions after which finally actually land on a technique that is now on the coronary heart of this new initiative we’ve referred to as Trellis. 

Financial improvement in agriculture has 3 occasions the influence on lifting folks out of poverty in comparison with different sector investments.

Trellis is a $30 million funding initiative throughout 4 rising markets that may put money into early-stage social entrepreneurs which are fixing issues and poverty on the heart of agriculture and local weather change. So, over the past six months I’ve shifted from a strategic workflow to a fundraising and implementation workflow.

Houde: I’m curious as to how precisely you outline this idea of agricultural investing versus influence investing? Is there a distinction? 

Wayne: Generally, we’re simply speaking a couple of sector-specific lens on investing. On this case, agriculture. There’s quite a lot of alternative ways you possibly can put money into agriculture. You should buy land, commerce in commodities or put money into know-how that companies the trade. However at Acumen, we’re particularly centered on influence investing that solves issues of poverty, which is an concept pioneered by our founder Jacqueline Novogratz again in 2001. It’s the thought of fusing the flexibleness and persistence of conventional help with the rigor and framework of conventional monetary markets. The way in which she determined to go about that was by means of taking in philanthropic {dollars} after which reinvesting them in early-stage social entrepreneurs that had been fixing issues of poverty, creating actually progressive options to resolve among the thorniest issues on the earth. 

So, given that there is 500 million smallholder farmers around the globe they usually present as a lot as 35 % of the meals that we eat on the earth and instantly influence the every day livelihoods of two.5 billion folks, it was pure that agriculture would turn out to be a key pillar and focus space for our investing. It additionally seems that financial improvement in agriculture has thrice the influence on lifting folks out of poverty in comparison with different sector investments. So, all the celebrities aligned and it turned a very clear place the place we would have liked to commit capital. 

Affect investing in agriculture is about placing the influence first. According to our monetary return, we make sure that we’re having a measurable influence return. In our case, and with this new initiative, it is about constructing local weather resilience, earnings enhancements and livelihood enhancements for smallholder farmers. 

Houde: Are there different organizations like Acumen engaged on this on the identical scale? 

Wayne: More and more so. Twenty years in the past, there have been most likely seven to 10 complete influence traders. The [Global Impact Investing Network] this 12 months counts nicely over 3,300 influence funding organizations managing greater than $1.1 trillion. So, the dimensions of progress inside this area is fairly great, and the capital underneath administration is rising considerably. We’re seeing unimaginable commitments from companies, improvement finance establishments, foundations and philanthropists who need to broaden this work. The IKEA Basis, for instance, is likely one of the latest, largest gamers in influence investing around the globe, and we’ve developed some unimaginable partnerships with them. It’s thrilling to see that there’s a complete vary of various stakeholders enabling this bigger ecosystem. 

Houde: Inform us a bit of bit about what you’re keen on about your job. You clearly have quite a lot of data and keenness. 

Wayne: I work with actually cool, good and dedicated folks. Even in my early interviews with the group, I linked with the folks I used to be speaking to. There was a measure of idealism tempered by actual world expertise. And Jacqueline, who’s our CEO, is sort of a prolific author and far of her “Manifesto for a Ethical Revolution” seeps down into the group and its hiring practices. It’s created a gaggle of individuals from whom, anyplace I flip, I am getting an attention-grabbing thought or a push in the proper path, or some form of collaborative assist and help. I would say that is an enormous a part of it. 

Houde: With the dimensions you now work at, it feels such as you’ve stepped away from the grassroots aspect a bit of bit. Or is that also one thing you get to do? 

Wayne: I at all times believed within the UPS mannequin, the place everyone within the firm, all the best way as much as the CEO, needed to drive in a truck as soon as a month. It’s particularly necessary in agriculture and improvement work the place we have to keep hyperclose to the realities of the work on the bottom. Acumen follows that mind-set and has supported me to journey to our regional workplaces, the place nearly all of our funding work takes place, and spend time with investees and our regional groups, to make sure that what we’re (doing) is grounded in regional context. 

Acumen additionally developed a buyer survey instrument referred to as Lean Information, now operated by a derivative referred to as 60 decibels, which is a telephone and textual content message-based surveying service that enables us to, inside a couple of weeks, get responses from 250 or 300 small farmers to a set of questions that may drive our technique or our investing work. That’s an extremely highly effective instrument with which to remain tremendous near the viewers that we’re desiring to serve right here. 

Houde: What are among the developments that you just’re seeing in sustainable agriculture immediately? Or maybe you’d body it otherwise? 

Wayne: Properly, if you say sustainable agriculture, it means one thing completely different to completely different folks. There’s positively been a development in the direction of regenerative agriculture not too long ago. Should you take natural practices, that are third-party licensed, there’s a strongly supported and understood set of manufacturing practices there. Regenerative intends to construct on that by including in a wider vary of agroecological outcomes, together with social parts and the human relationship with the earth, in addition to particular climate-related outcomes, similar to carbon sequestration. 

However there’s nonetheless no consensus on a regenerative agriculture definition, and persons are taking it in several instructions. There’s a gaggle that believes unimaginable improvements in tech will scale it, and there is one other faction that claims that is an historical, Indigenous type of agriculture that wants a sort of persistence and intentionality that capitalism doesn’t afford. I sit in the midst of these two concepts. I believe that tech is an extremely highly effective enabler, however that the precise practices are steeped in 10,000 years of Indigenous practices. Indigenous communities have to be resourced to prepared the ground. This can be a actually previous trade we’re speaking about, and credit score is because of these populations which were doing this work for a very very long time. However how will we leverage tech to advertise the rules of regenerative agriculture to smallholders around the globe? That’s the important thing for me.

The influence investing area as a complete is recognizing that sector-level experience is essential for the way we develop our influence investing methods.

There’s now an enormous deal with meals programs, which is nice however, once more, means so many alternative issues to so many alternative folks. More and more, we’re seeing this concept of “let’s eat native” and home meals safety changing into an increasing number of necessary, particularly when you could have crises just like the warfare in Ukraine limiting fertilizer accessibility and dramatically lowering the power for creating international locations to entry primary commodities, like grain. That at all times turns the arrow again towards, what are particular person international locations doing to shore up our personal meals safety and native meals programs?

So, there’s quite a bit on the market and you’ll’t assist however discuss different proteins and AI and precision agriculture too. That’s the place quite a lot of the cash proper now could be flowing. 

Houde: You do not come from a finance background. So how did you get into influence investing? What abilities do you utilize to promote or pitch your self? 

Wayne: The pathway to influence investing is usually by means of worldwide improvement, enterprise, finance or entrepreneurship. There’s lots of people who got here to it as they left finance as they had been unhappy and needed to make use of their abilities for good. What I’ve seen extra not too long ago is quite a lot of hiring happening round particular sector-level experience. The influence investing area as a complete is recognizing that that experience is essential for the way we develop our influence investing methods, and that our understanding of, in my case, the practical unit of a farm, was essential to the best way that we tried to put money into them. 

I believe I discovered a house at Acumen as they mentioned we’d like somebody who understands entrepreneurship, investing and improvement broadly, however who actually can deliver this sector stage experience to our earlier agricultural investing and form a technique round that. They had been very intentional about hiring somebody who had agricultural expertise, and I believe that is as a result of I used to be in a position to say that the long-term data I’ve in-built agriculture will likely be a major return to this group over the following 10 years. 

Houde: Lastly, what are the talents which are invaluable so that you can do your job nicely? 

Wayne: I am working with inner and exterior stakeholders on a regular basis. It’s a collaborative method throughout, simply, 30 completely different stakeholders internally. I must handle views and insights internally, after which a complete vary of exterior stakeholders who’ve engaged with our agriculture work and assist us perceive our level of differentiation. So, my capacity to collaborate throughout inner and exterior groups — deliver folks in, inspire them, excite them or push again the place needed — is essential.