B09: Adventures in Mixing For-Profit Investment With Philanthropy
Track
Supporting Nonprofit Resilience
Session Designer
Justin Oliver, Gary Community Investments
Session Description
How can an impact investing perspective help traditional grantmakers be more effective at achieving our missions? How and why would a funder transition to impact investing? What options are open to grantmakers seeking to test the waters? This session will explore how grantmakers optimize impact by aligning our philanthropy with investment, both philosophically and practically. During a series of fast paced, small-group conversations, you will consider how to expand your portfolios to best address social issues. Speakers will discuss challenges learned from combining philanthropic and for-profit investments, including the appropriate situations for various structures of capital. Through group discussion, you will be challenged collegially to consider how and why aligning for-profit investments and grant funding under one roof may or may not maximize your organization’s social impact.
Session Designers
Justin Oliver, Gary Community Investments
Speakers
![[photo]](https://8ca84662c5b8f0cff50d-4baaaf97d63fd7b01243e1b1c57f0cc1.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/1203/profile_f940502f759d4923245aa9f5bc2f0d0b.png "Luis Duarte, Gary Community Investments")
Luis Duarte, Gary Community Investments
Biography
Luis serves as Investment Director, Community and Impact Investing at Gary Community Investments. His role includes sourcing, structuring, conducting due diligence, and executing on philanthropic, near-market, and market-rate investment opportunities. Luis is also a serial social entrepreneur, with background in the private and public sectors, and brings that experience to the pursuit of creating social impact through impact investing. He has been a Fellow at the Unreasonable Institute, and holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Tec de Monterrey and an MBA from Babson College. Luis holds board positions at Accion, JoyBox, and the Denver Business Series.
![[photo]](https://8ca84662c5b8f0cff50d-4baaaf97d63fd7b01243e1b1c57f0cc1.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/1204/profile_ad601668654b0582db46052218510cdf.png "Andrea Armeni, Transform Finance")
Andrea Armeni, Transform Finance
Biography
Andrea is the co-founder and Executive Director of Transform Finance, which works with investors, entrepreneurs, and communities to turn capital into a tool for real, transformative social change through impact investing. A lawyer by training, Andrea was previously the Executive Director of the Gaia Amazon Fund. His experience with the impact of outsider-led projects on indigenous communities led him to rethink the priorities of investments and social entrepreneurship through a community-focused lens. He has taught sustainable development at Université Paris-Dauphine (France) and was a lecturer at the Yale Law School on the connections between law, power, and democracy.
![[photo]](https://8ca84662c5b8f0cff50d-4baaaf97d63fd7b01243e1b1c57f0cc1.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/1205/profile_5355907ae4a53407aef8c2e3670f3406.png "Justin Oliver, Gary Community Investments")
Justin Oliver, Gary Community Investments
Biography
Justin is Director of Learning and Impact Assessment at Gary Community Investments and the Piton Foundation in Denver, Colorado. His recent background is in overseeing rigorous evaluations of social development programs around the world with Innovations for Poverty Action, and as Executive Director of the Centre for Micro Finance in Chennai, India. He started his career as a consultant to private equity firms with Ernst & Young Investor Group Services, before spending two years in Mauritania with the Peace Corps. Justin has a Masters of Public Policy from the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government.