What is Philanthropic Impact Investment?

Philanthropic Impact Investment is using charitable donations as investments into organizations and companies to create a beneficial social or environmental impact together with a financial return. This double bottom line concept - fiscal and impact accounting - creates dynamic solutions to many problems with better long-term development than traditional gifting.

Impact investment uses a business-model to create self-sustaining solutions. SharedImpact funding from your charitable giving provides the capital to push this process forward.   

SharedImpact - what do we do?

SharedImpact is a charitable organization dedicated to making impact investment as easy as possible.

We curate a platform of charitable Impact opportunities integrated with an online DAF (Donor-Advised Fund) 
account system to make your life as a donor a lot easier.

Impact Investment Opportunities

Donor-advised funds are a way for individuals to effectively manage their charitable giving. Sometimes they are described as cost-effective alternative to running your own private foundation, but they also add extra capabilities not available to most private foundations. SharedImpact is a donor-advised fund with an emphasis on lending money to charities.

How it works

Tax benefits

You donate money to SharedImpact. As SharedImpact is a registered charity your donation has the tax benefits that any donation to a charity attracts. For example SharedImpact can receive GiftAid on your donation.  There are no upper or lower limits on the amount you can move into your SharedImpact account.

Your choice

These donations stay within SharedImpact until you advise us where to put them. We follow your advice so long as it matches our charitable objectives and it is feasible. Our charitable objectives include “helping charitable bodies, and non-charitable bodies pursuing a charitable purpose, to access funding solutions to help them thrive for the benefit of the public”.

You can make these choices whenever you like – you can top-up your account when it suits you, and distribute that donation, either fully or partially, whenever you wish.

SharedImpact is an online system so you can use it at any time.

Social investment

Often charitable organisations wish to borrow money. It is sometimes as simple as a loan for one year so a roof can be fixed in the summer, or perhaps a company that has a social purpose (often called a social enterprise) wants to expand and needs to raise money by selling shares. Sometimes charities that provide services get paid afterwards, and they need to borrow money now to pay their costs.

SharedImpact allows you to direct your donations into these ‘social investments’. You can lend your donation to a charity, and when they repay lend it out again. You can help many charities and social enterprises as you lend out your donation again and again. SharedImpact also allows you to donate your account balance to charities if you wish to.

SharedImpact has a large portfolio of qualified impact opportunities. These are a full range of organizations and funds from this country and around the world, and in many sectors. These range from charities that are looking for loan finance but are unable to access conventional debt arrangements, through to organizations in emerging markets where the simple creation of employment can have life changing impact. We also give donors access to invest their philanthropic capital in large Impact projects, and access to Impact Bonds and other financial instruments that underpin the rapidly expanding Impact investment space.

Personal giving & philanthropy

Giving for Wealth Advisors

Impact Investment recipients

A simple but powerful tax efficient
way to make charitable investments.
Build your own Foundation account.
Get an immediate tax deduction and
decide on deployment later.

If your assets are managed by a Wealth Advisor, you can ask them to handle your philanthropy via SharedImpact.

They continue to manage the assets, but they are held within a SharedImpact Donor-Advised Fund.

If you are personally involved with a charity, perhaps as a trustee or advisor, we may be able to help it raise funding from new sources.

This can be via simple grants, or via loans, bonds, revenue-participation agreements etc.

Learn more about personal giving ▸

Impact DAFs for Wealth Advisors ▸

How to get onto the portfolio ▸

Getting started with Philanthropic Impact Investment

SharedImpact enables you to make meaningful impact investments with your philanthropic capital and take advantage of all the tax relief available whether you are resident in the USA, in the UK or Hong Kong.

To make it as easy as possible to get started in what can be the complex world of Impact investment SharedImpact has created a number of Funds made up of a curated selection of social and environmental impact opportunities. These Funds are managed by SharedImpact and financial gains are aggregated to the fund as a whole. These funds are a very efficient way to promote impact and do not attract any personal account reporting costs. SharedImpact offers a General Fund with investments made across the board. We also offer Feature Funds, with impact investments restricted to a specific theme or region. We currently offer Feature Funds in Health, Education, Africa and Asia. You can find out more below.

The SharedImpact Ventures Growth Fund

SharedImpact is on a mission to radically change the way philanthropic capital is used to fund social impact and charitable enterprises.

By choosing to donate your philanthropic capital to the SharedImpact Ventures Growth Fund you’ll be part of a movement to deliver real change in how social impact and charitable enterprises are funded, managed and held accountable.

Join us today with a donation into the SharedImpact Ventures Growth Fund. ▸