Opportunity can be disguised

FUND DEVELOPMENT & MANAGEMENT Services

Relevant capital must be structured to meet the needs of those it intends to help. When funds are seeking to accomplish social, environmental, or other strategic goals alongside financial return, that structuring can become quite challenging. Often a lead investment of catalytic capital is necessary to unlock additional capital. Once created, strategic funds can struggle to successfully deploy capital and realize projected returns or impact. Pipeline development and credible due diligence are essential to execution.

We are proud to have worked on a variety of endeavors, including some we cannot disclose, such as:

FUND MANAGEMENT & OVERSIGHT

• Management of the Echoing Green Signal Fund, a $40 million catalytic capital fund making direct deployments into the world’s leading social innovators.  In addition to fund management, integration of significant programmatic supports for founders including capital readiness, mentorship, and technical assistance fundings.

• Management of the Angel City Seed Fund, an internal pool of capital deploying direct investments into early-stage social enterprises and community voices in Greater Los Angeles and beyond.  The Seed Fund is comprised of two vehicles:  an investment fund that accepts outside LP investments, and a donor-advised fund that accepts philanthropic investments.

• Board and Investment Committee oversight of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, one of few philanthropies to commit 100% of its endowment to mission-alignment and retain BIPOC managers as OCIO.

• Investment Committee oversight of the Fair Food Fund, a national food enterprise investor deploying catalytic capital and wrap-around business services.

• Selection as portfolio manager by Los Angeles County Department of Opportunity to service over 200 loans made to small businesses by various public agencies.

FUND DESIGN & STRUCTURING

• Design of the Echoing Green Signal Fund as a model for founder-first deployments of catalytic capital to bridge social innovators through the Valley of Death.

• Design of the Nathan Cummings PRI Program as a mission-aligned investment program that exists within the investment corpus, not as a carve-out from grantmaking budgets.

• Design of the Michigan Good Food Fund (Fund II) model with a significant pivot towards community governance, racial equity targets, and a multi-lender platform targeting $40 million in deployments supported by credit enhancements and enterprise advisory resources.

• The design and deployment of California FreshWorks (Fund I & Fund II), alongside knowledgeable partners, likely still the largest private healthy food financing vehicle of its kind. The third iteration of FreshWorks is underdevelopment and has recently been awarded a $3 million seed award.

• Design of a prototype film fund for the Marguerite Casey Foundation to help resource creators of color and launch emerging writers, directors, and producers that drive narrative change and portray the future we hope to see.

• Design and Implementation Plan for the Los Angeles County Microloan Program that uses balance sheet equity, technical assistance subsidy, and loan guarantees to bring capital to the informal economy, re-entry populations, and microentrepreneurs who are unsupported by traditional banking, government, and philanthropic loan programs.

Investment DUE DILIGENCE

• Financial, sectoral, and operational due diligence of social enterprise Everytable alongside fund-level diligence of the Social Equity Franchise program’s $25 million financing arm for a potential syndicate of CDFIs and debt investors alongside a catalytic capital guarantor.

• Due diligence of a broadcasting and media production company and companion film fund vehicle seeking investment capital to finance independent projects from rising creatives.

• Due diligence of two technology companies seeking seed stage investment for models seeking to reduce incarceration and accelerate re-entry into employment, housing and credit post-incarceration.

• The design, manager due diligence, and ongoing monitoring of the Los Angeles Bioscience Investment Fund, which attracts high-risk capital to place as venture investments into early-stage life science companies as part of a regional economic development strategy. 

• Demand assessment and advising on the Catalytic Development Fund, which intends to invest in public and private real assets as a catalyst for redevelopment in Los Angeles County.

• Due diligence across a number of unique and complex transactions, such as the acquisition of a large portfolio of distressed housing assets by a regional nonprofit to divest them from an absentee private equity player and bring them into the inventory of affordable housing units in an overheated market.