Aligned Portfolio

Aligned Portfolio

Within the Aligned Portfolio, Swift Foundation has created three pools of funding to diversify our holdings and enable us to engage in different kinds of investments: Funds, Direct Investments and Angel Investments.

Fund managers are intermediary organizations that establish program-specific funds and directly source, evaluate and underwrite investments. Through an investment with a fund manager, the foundation extends our reach, becomes part of a larger community of like-minded investors and has a better assurance of capital preservation and impact. The funds also serve as a source for potential direct or angel investments. These investments are usually in the range of $500,000 and above, and compose 60 to 70 percent of the Aligned Portfolio.

Direct Investments are made in those organizations with a strong mission alignment, significant opportunity for social return and established repayment ability. These investments are usually in the range of $250,000 to $1,000,000 and compose 20 to 30 percent of the Aligned Portfolio.

Angel Investments focus on high impact, early stage and possibly higher risk investments with less emphasis on capital preservation and less rigor on underwriting standards. These investments can be up to $75,000, make up 10 percent of the portfolio and are usually long term in nature.

Swift Foundation engages in ongoing learning from these investments with an eye toward refining our understanding of where and how capital is most needed in order to address the key issues upon which the foundation is focused. We currently have approximately $10 million set aside for these highly mission-aligned investments. See the descriptions of current investments here.

Asociacion ANDES

Asociacion ANDES is an NGO involved in the struggle and relief of poverty, biodiversity management, the recognition and strengthening of communal traditional rights on biocultural resources, and the promotion of institutional changes and policies relevant to conservation and development. It is a grantee-partner of the Swift Foundation. This is a...

Barefoot College

Barefoot College, a charitable entity founded in India, has been pioneering the adoption of solar electrification in remote rural villages since 1989. Its model centers on empowering women to train as solar technicians and salespeople who return to their villages and share their expertise. As Barefoot College scales this decentralized,...

Beneficial Returns

Beneficial Returns borrows money from family foundations and donor advised funds (DAFs), pools the funds, and makes equipment loans of $50, 000 – $500, 000 to social enterprises addressing poverty in emerging markets. With additional capital these social enterprises are able to deepen and broaden their impact in fields such...

Buen Vivir Fund

The Buen Vivir Fund, founded by Thousand Currents, their partners and donors, seeks to design a transformative approach to impact investing that supports grassroots economic initiatives. By working through a donors/investees circle, the Fund seeks to promote financial models and practices that support communities’ holistic wellbeing and enable all participants...

California Farmlink

California Farmlink is dedicated to connecting independent farmers and ranchers to the land and financing the need for a sustainable future. They support beginning, limited-resource, immigrant and other underserved farmers. They work across the state of California, with particular focus on North Coast, Central Coast, Sacramento and San Joaquin Valley....

Canticle Farms

Canticle Farms, founded in 1994, is an intentional community of individuals living in five homes in Fruitvale, Oakland that became a nonprofit in 2011. It shares a common farmed yard and spaces where farmers engage in sustainable agroecology, spiritual practices and restorative justice work. This loan partially supports their ability...

Copia Global

Copia Global is bringing ecommerce to the Base of the Pyramid, transforming this historically neglected market into empowered global consumers.  It is the best of Amazon plus Fedex plus a healthy dose of emerging market expertise.  Founded in Silicon Valley in 2013, Copia started its operations in East Africa and is now serving 3,...

El Wayruro Organico

El Wayruro is an organic grocery store in Quito, Ecuador owned by farmer-leaders and entrepreneurs from Red de Guardianes de Semillas, a Swift Foundation grantee. This 6-years old store was bought in July 2019 to meet the needs of the agroecological farmers in RGS who need to sell their products...

First Nations Oweesta Corporation

First Nations Oweesta Corporation was created in 1999 and is a national Native CDFI Intermediary and a certified Native CDFI.  Their mission is to provide opportunities for Native people to develop financial assets and create wealth by assisting in the establishment of strong, permanent institutions and programs contributing to economic...

Fledge

Fledge is a global network of conscious company accelerators and seed funds, helping entrepreneurs create impactful companies and co-ops at scale through intense, short programs filled with education, guidance, and a massive amount of mentorship.

Global Partnerships

Global Partnerships Social Investment Fund 6.0 (SIF 6.0) provides working capital for microenterprises in agriculture, health and renewable energy across Latin America, the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa.

Heavenly Organics (Fairfield Organics)

Heavenly Organics sells a variety of honey products. They pay farmers a premium for sustainably harvested organic honey grown in the northern India region. In this way, Heavenly Organics is helping to provide economic development with environmentally sustainable practices.

Impact Assets, Inc.

Impact Assets Global Sustainable Agriculture Note was created to open up a debt instrument, managed by Alterfin, a European sustainable agriculture advisor, which invests in grower cooperatives and agricultural enterprises to non-accredited investors with a $25, 000 minimum investment.

Iroquois Valley Farms

Iroquois Valley Farms is a restorative farmland finance company providing land access to organic family farmers, with a focus on the next generation. It uses private investment capital to facilitate farmers’ expansion plans through leasing or mortgage financing. Their goal is to enable healthy food production, soil restoration and water...

MCE Social Capital

MCE Social Capital uses its over $100 million in guaranteed capital to lend out over $50 million to microfinance institutions (MFIs) and small and growing businesses (SGB) in the global south with a particular focus on women. Over their 10 year history, it has made more than $100 million in...

MicroEnergy Credits (MEC)

MicroEnergy Credits provides capital to MFIs for microloans to poor people looking to adopt clean energy alternatives. MicroEnergy Credits has developed a unique capability to capture and sell the carbon emission reductions derived from clean energy microloans. With every household that adopts clean energy, MEC and the microfinance institution earn...

Native American Natural Foods

Native American Natural Foods, LLC is a Native American natural food brand based on the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The company’s goal is to create and sell healthy foods based on buffalo meat, which restores and preserves their lands, ecosystems and the Buffalo. They launched the first meat and...

Native Capital Access

Provide socially motivated capital for projects that advance the environmental sustainability, public health, and/or social, economic or physical infrastructure of American Indian tribes in the Southwestern United States. Native Capital Access (formerly the Southwest Native Green Loan Fund) is managed by Native Home Capital, a community development financial institution located...

NESsT Social Enterprise Loan Fund

NESsT started in 1997 and invests in social enterprises that provide dignified jobs for people in emerging market countries. Their investments create employment for the poorest communities facing isolation, discrimination, lack of job skills and poor education. They believe social enterprises are best positioned to transform communities so that all...

Raven Indigenous Fund

Raven Indigenous Capital Partners was founded as a solution to the lack of access to culturally appropriate investment capital for Indigenous entrepreneurs and communities. They modify and leverage existing approaches – impact investing and deep engagement with Indigenous communities – to build a vibrant reconciliation economy. The namesake, the Raven,...

responsAbility

responsAbility Investments AG is a private Swiss enterprise, founded in 2003 and headquartered in Zurich. Its core business are investments in microfinance companies which provide credit and other banking services to very small, small and medium-sized enterprises who have previously had limited access to formal financial services in frontier or developing countries. In addition, investments are made...

Root Capital

The mission of Root Capital is to stimulate economic development for the rural poor while encouraging biodiversity conservation. By targeting small and medium businesses for loans, Root seeks to stimulate this neglected area of the economy through grassroots sustainable business practices.

Rosebud Economic Development Corp

In 1999, the Rosebud Sioux Tribal Government stepped forward to begin reclaiming their right to economic self-determination by establishing REDCO. Designed as the economic arm of the Tribe, REDCO’s purpose is to generate revenue and create economic opportunity for the Sicangu Lakota Oyate and surrounding communities.

Rudolf Steiner Foundation (Food System Transformation Fund)

The Rudolf Steiner Foundation’s (RSF) Food System Transformation Fund (formerly the Food and Agriculture PRI Fund) provides loans of $50, 000 or more to non-profit and for-profit social enterprises addressing key issues in food production, food access, value-added processing, distribution, retail and waste management.  RSF was founded in 1936 by...

Rudolf Steiner Foundation (Social Investment Fund)

The Rudolf Steiner Foundation’s (RSF) Social Investment Fund provides mortgage loans, construction loans and working capital lines of credit to nonprofit and for-profit enterprises in North America that are dedicated to improving the well being of society and the environment. This includes three themes: Food & Agriculture, Education & the...

Shared Interest

Shared Interest seeks to leverage locally available knowledge and credit, build on South African and Southern African capacity and infrastructure, and strengthen the local economy to enhance self-sufficiency of communities and the region as a whole. It uses capital to provide guarantees to support loans made by in-country lenders serving...

Something Better Foods

Something Better Foods was founded by Chef Chew founder of the Veg Hub in Oakland, CA. It is a food company that has created a plant-based protein product that is a substitute for meat products. The company has a proprietary process that duplicates meat in texture, taste and appearance and...

Storytellers’ Foundation

Storytellers’ Foundation, based in Hazelton, British Columbia, works with the Gitxsan Nation to develop genuine economic change including the creation of Genuine Progress indicators, developing youth leadership through job training and exchanges with elders, and building community development activities. This loan will enable this 20-year old organization to purchase a...

Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation

Thunder Valley CDC is a non-profit organization founded in 2007 and serves the Lakota community. The mission of Thunder Valley CDC is to empower Lakota youth and families to improve the health, culture, and environment of our communities through the healing and strengthening of cultural identity. This investment is to...