The United Nations Social Impact Fund (UNDP-UNSIF) is a unique and transparent co-investment platform where the entrepreneurs, philanthropists, grant contributors and capital market investors can use blended financing models to create both economic and social dividends while facilitating the transition from grant-only project-based development to blended financed market-based development. UNSIF is
the only 'blended finance' investment platform of the UN and combines traditional development grants with private sector capital investments of debt and equity. UNSIF facilitates SDG-aligned investments that support the next-generation of Social Entrepreneurs and socially respond corporations in order to:
+ Invest in businesses value-chains ahead of emerging technology releases
+ Consideration of hybrid capital structures and new partnership architectures
+ Design alternate exit pathways so that solutions become investable by the pure capital markets
+ Shift the social impact investment risk-return profile with flexible capital and favorable terms
+ Share local market knowledge and experience along the social impact investment value chain
+ Build local capacity within the social impact eco-system (individual, private, public)
UNSIF is a founding member of the Sustainable Finance Collective Asia – a partnership with ING Bank (Singapore), Credit-Suisse (Switzerland) and the Netherlands Development Finance Company, sourcing investment deals through a common online platform (SFA-Asia.com). UNSIF is also establishing an international academic research consortium to harness capital markets and commercial business in support of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The goal is to identify new analytical frameworks, mathematical underpinnings, market mechanisms and policy levers that will incentivize commercial capital and business to be naturally drawn towards delivering the SDGs.
