Takeaways from Latimpacto’s “Impact Minds: Beyond Frontiers”

We joined IAF grantee Latimpacto at their annual conferenceImpact Minds: Beyond FrontiersSeptember 9-12 in Oaxaca, Mexico. Latimpacto is a network of 200 impact investors that aims to mobilize more capital towards impact, share innovative practices and produce information, and foster partnerships and collaborations, including through events like this. Impact Minds brought together a broad spectrum of funders, lenders, and grantmakers for dialogue and interaction.

We were pleased to see how significantly the conference has been growing over the years-we estimated that attendance more than doubled over last year-and specifically how strongly organizations local to Oaxaca and Mexico participated.

Our President & CEO Sara Aviel joined the plenary panel on "Catalytic philanthropy" on September 12. A theme that emerged in this and other sessions was a healthy tension between social impact investing and the emerging trend of trust-based philanthropy. On the one hand, funders want to draw on the best possible data on the impact and ROI of their investments. On the other, funders want to trust organizations and communities closest to the challenges, relieving them of burdensome reporting requirements. By fostering a "big tent" environment, Latimpacto brought these perspectives together, encouraging a thoughtful, ongoing debate on these respective roles in the philanthropic landscape.

Our Managing Director of Programs, Greg Jacobs, moderated a panel called "Beyond unicorns-investing in NGOs, community businesses and SMEs" on September 12. Another major theme at Impact Minds was how organizations are overcoming continued legal and financial barriers to lending or investing in grassroots non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

Some of the proposed solutions focused on loans that have more favorable interest rates, grace periods, or payment terms than traditional loans, because they finance activities that are for the common good (known as "concessionary lending conditions"). Other loans can reduce risk to small businesses by tying repayments to profits, allowing businesses to reduce payments at moments when they are taking in less income (known as "revenue-based financing"). Finally, speakers focused on blended finance, which can provide a framework for different investors and investment models to come together to fund different aspects of the same development project.

Gabriela Boyer, IAF's lead Foundation Representative for our Community Philanthropy initiative, also joined a panel entitled "Financial innovations for the success of migrants."

Events like these often generate side meetings, and our Partnership Specialist, Matt Clausen, attended an affinity group for Latin America and the Caribbean hosted prior to the conference by IAF grantee WINGS on September 6-7 in Mexico City. The meeting sought to continue establishing common terms and understandings in the philanthropic ecosystem. Participants worked together to identify their respective roles in supporting philanthropy in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Our team comes back from events like this inspired by the work others are doing and motivated to explore new ideas. Congratulations to Latimpacto for hosting an enriching gathering space and we look forward to engaging more in the future!