Social ventures

Social entrepreneurs around the world are harnessing novel business models to fuel widespread social change. By linking profit with purpose, they are creating solutions with the potential to scale and solve entrenched development challenges. But these ambitious innovators are often undercapitalized and don’t have access to the resources they need for their ventures to first survive and then thrive.

Our impact investing arm, Mercy Corps Ventures (MCV), partners with these pioneers to iterate and scale bold solutions to the world’s toughest challenges. Beyond investing the right kind of capital — which includes equity, convertible debt, and blended finance — MCV provides advice, technical support, and connections across Mercy Corps’ global network of corporate partners, governments, civil society, and the private sector.

MCV managed the Innovation Investment Alliance, a funding collaborative between USAID’s Global Development Lab and the Skoll Foundation that granted over $50M to eight, proven social enterprises and generates the Scaling Pathways series with insights on how to scale social impact. MCV is also one of the most active early-stage investors in frontier markets, taking on early risk to be the catalytic capital that bridges the gap between entrepreneurs and capital markets.