Impact Trust
About The Impact Trust
One of Nexii’s founding shareholders is The Impact Trust, a non-profit, public benefit organization. The Impact Trust carries out a variety of activities, which include research, product design and development, capacity building and training, broad-based field building and advocacy.
In order to improve and expand the impact investing marketplace, The Trust aims to build understanding and practice standards by:
- Fulfilling an advocacy role and in so doing raise awareness and stimulate debate around the concept and practice of impact investment
- Designing new financing mechanisms to be implemented with partner organisations to secure long-term funding for programme delivery and impact performance at scale
- Considering the revision of policies and regulatory frameworks to facilitate the growth of social enterprise and impact investing in practice
- Analysing the capacity and technical challenges facing high impact investment opportunities
- Growing the body of research available to facilitate the expansion of impact investing and provide programs and resources to advance impact investing through education
- Developing effective mechanisms to build the technical and organisational structures within social enterprises to enhance their ability to absorb capital
Corporate Structures Research
The Impact Trust has initiated a research project with the support of South African National Treasury and key advisors across the globe to consider whether and how alternative legal structures, policy frameworks and regulatory enablers might have application to South Africa and Africa more broadly. With the goal of drafting a White Paper to be submitted to Parliament in 2013, the Impact Trust is now engaging with social businesses, SMEs, investors and advisors globally to understand the experience and potential of appropriate structures that might inform this work.
For this work to be meaningful it is critical for us to understand the implications on existing social, small and growing businesses and their investors, and the regulatory landscape within which these businesses currently operate.