In a standard venture capital or private equity fund, the fund manager is entitled to 20% of the fund’s profits. This is known as the “carried interest.”
The innovation of Buckhill Capital and Morrison & Foerster is a set of provisions that can be imported into the relevant documents of most venture capital or private equity fund so that the carried interest is paid out to a fund manager only to the extent that the fund achieves quantified, verifiable impact metrics agreed upon by the fund manager and the fund’s investors. This has the potential to create billions of dollars of incentives for institutional investment managers of all kinds to pursue impact goals alongside financial returns.
Background
Henrik Jones and his company, Buckhill Capital, seek to “finance companies on a mission.” In the course of doing this work, Buckhill encountered a multitude of companies and investment funds claiming to seek environmental, social, and other impact goals, along with delivering a compelling financial return. At times, after investors have signed their agreements and wired their money, Buckhill has observed that the initial focus on impact alongside financial return has faded or took a back seat to financial return and even disappeared altogether. Even when a company or fund addresses impact in the narrative of its periodic reports, it does not always get the same rigorous treatment that the financials get.
Buckhill was not aware of any investment fund manager that has its receipt of carried interest depend directly on whether or not the fund achieves quantified impact goals that are independently audited and verified and that has done so in a manner specifically designed to be easily repeatable and used at scale by other fund managers.
Buckhill decided to things differently when it was presented with an opportunity to gather a group of investors and pitch itself as an attractive source of Series A funding to a highly impactful socially responsible company, Higg Co, that was spinning out of the Sustainable Asset Coalition. Buckhill did not want to give mere lip service to impact and wanted to “put its money where its mouth was” and do something different. That something is the Carried Interest by Verified Impact Calculations (CIVIC).
Carried Interest by Verified Impact Calculations (CIVIC) innovation
BHI’s Carried Interest by Verified Impact Calculations (CIVIC) began with Buckhill’s vision of materially and financially aligning a fund manager’s interests with those of its impact-minded investors and impact-minded portfolio companies. It took the Social Enterprise + Impact Investing team at Morrison & Foerster to fully flesh out and implement the idea both in a way that would work for BHI and its investment into Higg Co but, per Buckhill’s directive, for any venture capital or private equity fund looking to do the same.
CIVIC Overview
The first key feature is the modularity of the BHI CIVIC approach. The documentation Morrison & Foerster prepared for BHI is set up so that any venture capital or private equity fund manager can customize and integrate the CIVIC distribution mechanics from BHI’s term sheet and BHI’s operating agreement into their own fund’s term sheet and operating agreement, leveraging the work that Buckhill and Morrison & Foerster have already done in thinking through some of the details discussed below.
The CIVIC mechanics then reference to a separate quantified Impact Test, which sets forth the quantified impact test for BHI or another fund. The quantified Impact Test is designed to be fully customizable on a fund-by-fund basis. This gives flexibility for different funds to have different impact goals, in different ways, and on different timelines. So the CIVIC provisions do not need to be reinvented with each fund, but each fund has full freedom in defining its own impact goals.
The other key features are reflected by the terms of the CIVIC provisions. To implement BHI’s general idea, Morrison & Foerster thought through some of the details that the solution would need to address. For example, is it more appropriate to the Impact Test be a staged, cumulative test (e.g., whereby the real goal is to reduce carbon emissions by X tons by year 10, but with interim, trend-line goals along the way) or a series of independent annual tests (e.g., prevent X tons of carbon in year 1, then regardless of year 1 results, prevent Y tons of carbon in year 2). Morrison & Foerster advised that the test use the former approach, as it better allows for the potential high variation year to year as a fund pursues impact goals that are intended to be achieved over its entire term. A related issue is what happens if a fund does not meet its interim goal for a given year — does the fund manager forever lose the carried interest associated with that year, or can the fund manager earn it back by overly successful follow-up years that get the fund back to the desired trend-line vis-à-vis its impact goals?
Morrison & Foerster advised allowing the fund manager to earn back carried interest not received in a previous year, again because the impact goals are determined by the desired end of a long journey, and at the outset we might know the rate of progress along the way.
Buckhill hopes that the CIVIC waterfall will be a standard in impact investing and promote accountability of fund managers across the entire ecosystem. By promoting its adoption, if it is not already in fund documents, investors will have the knowledge to ask for the term.
The Capital Access Lab (CAL) is a national pilot initiative that aims to find, promote, and scale innovative investment managers who are providing new kinds of capital to underserved entrepreneurs and communities in the United States.
In July 2020, the Capital Access Lab announced its investments in 5 funds investing in underserved entrepreneurs through innovative investment structures: 1863 Ventures, Anzu Partners, Capacity Capital, Collab Capital, and Indie.vc. During the selection process of these 5 funds, the Capital Access Lab identified over 100 funds focused on underserved entrepreneurs. This report analyzes the approach of a subset of 20 funds that responded to our survey.
Through our analysis, we learned that funds investing in underserved entrepreneurs through alternative investment structures are often nimble investment vehicles that operate in the very early stages of the portfolio companies’ development, really enabling these companies to raise the first essential capital to fuel their growth. They do not invest exclusively in high growth sectors like traditional VCs; our study shows that they are often sector agnostic and have a wide range of return expectations and initial criteria for the investment that are much more flexible than what we typically see in traditional venture capital.
Whereas these funds face challenges related to covering the structural and operational costs of running an investment fund with relatively low Asset Under Management, they represent a nascent and very targeted approach to serving underserved entrepreneurs. Through this report, we hope to highlight their work, support their growth, and inspire potential funders and donors to invest in them.
BACKGROUND
The Toniic Institute, through the Impact Terms Platform, developed this report about the work of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the Capital Access Lab on investment funds adopting alternative investment instruments. The Capital Access Lab is designed to provide risk capital to new investment models that do not resemble traditional venture capital or lending, spurring the formation of new financing mechanisms that increase capital investment to underserved entrepreneurs who have been historically left behind due to their race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic class, and/or geographic location.
The objective of this report is to review the lessons learned from the Capital Access Lab’s work and to share innovative ways investors can invest in entrepreneurs who are underserved by venture capital and traditional lending structures. Our goal is to describe emerging approaches to investments, liquidity, and risk/return profiles that can be more inclusive for entrepreneurs.
The Capital Access Lab (CAL), formed in 2019, is a national pilot initiative that aims to find, promote, and scale innovative investment managers who are providing new kinds of capital to underserved entrepreneurs and communities in the United States. The Capital Access Lab was created to help address this capital gap by creating a new vehicle to invest in alternative capital funds survive those entrepreneurs That same year, the Lab’s lead investor and sponsor, the Kauffman Foundation, released a report, titled “Access to Capital for Entrepreneurs: Removing Barriers”, which observed that a surprisingly high percentage of entrepreneurs – more than 83% – do not access bank loans or venture capital.
To source prospective funds, the Capital Access Lab created an online application process through which funds or proposed funds could apply for consideration for funding. The CAL did not widely publicize the announcement of this opportunity and instead relied primarily on word of mouth and limited media. When the fund application was announced, responses far exceeded their expectation. CAL had expected 20 to 40 funds to apply in the first year but ended up receiving close to 150 applications. Of those, over 100 fit the requirements for application. “One of the most positive signals to us – [was that] the submissions were mostly first-time fund managers and aspiring investors wanting to bring capital to their community” said John Tyler, Kauffman Foundation General Counsel. The CAL team was also encouraged and surprised by the diversity of the applicants. Roughly 55% of applicants were women and 50% persons of color. The large and diverse application pool reveals a significant demand for and interest in alternative capital structures.
The CAL had expected that many of the applicants would be larger funds that saw alternative capital structures as an additional opportunity. (Traditionally it is difficult for funds smaller than $10 million in assets to generate enough fees to cover their overhead.) Unexpectedly, the applicant pool included many smaller funds that would have traditionally been considered too small to rely only on traditional management fees, but instead many funds were a part of related organizations that could support the overhead. These related organizations included nonprofit business accelerators, Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs), and other organizations that wanted to bring investment capital to their communities. For example, 1863 Ventures, one of the funds that received investment, already had an active business development program and wanted to start an investment fund as a means of furthering its mission.
During their due diligence process, the Capital Access Lab identified over 100 funds focused on underserved entrepreneurs, eventually selecting five: 1863 Ventures, Anzu Partners, Capacity Capital, Collab Capital, and Indie.vc.
The Capital Access Lab includes as one of its initiatives, the Capital Access Lab Fund which is a donor advised fund housed at Impact Assets. That fund was capitalized by the Kaufman Foundation. The Capital Access Lab Fund, and a separate funding source from Rockefeller foundation, have invested in the five funds that were selected by The Capital Access Lab.
To ensure the preservation of a recognized charitable purpose under Section 501(c)(3), the Kauffman Foundation developed a charitability term sheet which it has made publicly available as an example of how a foundation structured a particular investment to further its charitable mission and ensure accountability thereto.
Although CAL could not invest in all the funds, they recognized there was a lot to learn and share about their innovative investment structures. This report analyses the approach of a subset of 20 funds who responded to our survey.
RESEARCH – RESULTS AND ANALYSIS
Toniic and the Impact Terms Platform conducted research for this study using a combination of interviews with the principals and a formal survey. The survey participants consist of funds that had applied to the Capital Access Lab during their initial funding period. Twenty funds participated in the survey. The data below highlights some key takeaways from our review.
FUND CHARACTERISTICS
TARGET FUND SIZE
Fifty percent of survey respondents reported a target fund size of less than $10 million.
This target size is consistent with the population of over 100 applicants who applied for funding from CAL – as 50% of those applicants also reported a target size under $10 million. If these funds were to use the traditional VC fee structure that means that they would expect to receive under $200,000 per year in management fees to cover management costs. These low fees are generally considered below the viable amount required by a fund management team without external middle and back office support.
INVESTMENT STAGE
Ninety five percent of participants report that they will invest in seed or pre-seed stage companies. Of those participants, 55% said they would also invest in Series A investments, leaving 45% who only target seed or pre seed stage investing. Only one fund participant would not invest in seed or pre seed stage companies targeting only post seed investments.
TARGET INVESTMENT SIZE
Consistent with the small average target fund size and largely seed stage investing, 65% of the participants expect to invest less than $300,000 per investment. Only 10% of respondents would invest more than $500,000.
TARGET SECTORS
45% of the respondents have indicated that they are sector agnostic, and 25% of the respondents (among the open-ended responses) included Food and Agriculture as one of their funds’ focus areas.
While traditional VC funds often target high growth sectors such as IT, Health Care, Financials, Telecommunication, the survey respondents did not indicate a strong tendency towards these sectors.
FINANCIAL INSTRUMENTS USED
The following section analyses the financial instruments used by these funds to invest in underserved entrepreneurs. The classification process of these alternative investment structures is a challenging process because there is not an agreed-upon vocabulary for many of the emerging investment structures, nor agreement about whether they should be broadly classified as equity or debt. For example, respondents may have differing opinions about if the Demand Dividend Structure should be debt or equity, so we asked about that structure as both debt and equity then combined them when appropriate to our analysis.
COMMON FEATURES OF ALTERNATIVE INVESTMENT STRUCTURES BASED ON CONTINGENT PAYMENTS
To structure these investments, investors typically start with a target IRR, make a range of estimates of the company’s future performance, and then structure the other terms and features of the investments, including the repayment terms such as the percent of revenues and return multiple cap to achieve that target IRR.
The survey asked a series of questions about the details of the alternative investing structures used by that participant. The questions were designed to get further details around what we anticipated would be the most common structures used: a variation of contingent payment structures. Seventy-five percent of the respondents reported using some form of alternative investment structure based on contingent payments (revenue-based debt, redeemable equity, or Demand Dividends).
These structures are flexible and can be designed to include a variety of features. The core feature of these structures is that they are contingent on something like the amount and timing of the portfolio companies’ revenues. Therefore, the return to the investor will vary based on the features of the investment and the financial performance of the company.
Basis of calculation
Of the 75% participants that stated they will or do use a form of contingent payment structure – 40% said they would invest using gross cash receipts as a basis of calculation, and 47% reported they would invest using net cash receipts. Thirteen percent reported they would use either gross or net cash receipts. Demand Dividend structures did not seem to affect this ratio, even though Demand Dividends typically use net cash receipts as a basis of calculation.
Return Expectations
Respondents reported a wide range of target IRR for their investments ranging from 2% to 35% and averaging 15%. We did not specify if we were asking for the target IRR for the fund or individual investment, but we believe that most participants were answering at the fund level.
Minimum annual revenue required for investment
Respondents reported a wide range of minimum required revenues for the investees ranging from under $50,000 per year to over $5 million per year. The median required revenues was $300,000-$400,000 per year.
Minimum annual revenue growth rate
Respondents reported a median required forecast annual revenue growth of 20-30% with only 16% requiring revenue growth of more than 40%. This differs significantly from the kind of minimum revenue growth requirements you would see from traditional VC.
Half of those who are making revenue based (or similar) finance structures are investing in seed or pre-seed, and will invest into forecast revenue growth below 30%. These characteristics are not common in traditional venture capital so this demonstrates the growth of new sources of capital, that are willing to invest with non-traditional approaches.
Minimum gross margin of target companies
Considering the role that revenues play in the calculation of repayment, we also asked about the minimum required gross margin in order to repay the investment. Respondents reported a minimum median target gross margin of 30-40%. At Impact Terms, our expectation was that lower reported minimum revenue growth rate targets would result in higher the margin requirements. We had this expectation because for an investor to receive a target return of X% on an investment in a lower growth company, that company typically must be able to support a higher percentage of cash flow paid to the investor which requires higher gross margins.
The opposite was the case, as it turned out. The funds that were willing to take the lowest forecast revenue growth in seed stage companies were also willing to take the lowest gross margins. Like the wide range in target IRR, this demonstrates that there is a much wider range of return expectations and minimum requirements than we see in traditional venture capital. One possible explanation is that the funds accepting lower gross margins for lower revenue growth companies are doing so as part of a strategy to provide the appropriate capital to the entrepreneurs. That is, the entrepreneurs they are targeting may simply not have higher revenue growth and margins so the funds used alternative investment structures with return features that the companies could afford.
Percentage of revenue used to repay the investment
Thirty-three percent of respondents indicated that their average percentage of revenues used to repay the investment is 5%, and overall 66.6% indicated an average percentage of revenues lower than 10%. This is typically repaid by the portfolio companies monthly or quarterly out of minimum targeted gross margins of 30-40%.
Average return multiple cap
Thirteen participants use an average return cap – meaning the average cash-on-cash multiple of the invested capital to be returned to the investor over the life of the investment. The industry average return cap is generally between 2x and 3x the initial invested amount. As an example – a cap of 3x on a $100,000 investment would mean the investment is complete when a total of $300,000 has been repaid. This is a common structuring feature of alternative investments that are based on revenue, cash flows or similar contingent payments. The total IRR of that investment would depend on the time it takes for repayment as well as the cap, so a 3x cap investment that takes 10 years to pay out would have a lower IRR than a 3x cap investment that takes 5 years to pay out.
REVIEW AND CONCLUSIONS
It is clear both from the large number of applicants for Capital Access Lab funding and from the follow up research we conducted that there is a significant and underserved ecosystem of small funds that are leveraging alternative investment structures to invest in companies focused on underserved populations. Many of the funds are sector agnostic and not many are targeting traditional venture sectors like IT, Health Care, Financials, Telecommunications. It is also evident from the wide range of return expectations and the combination of investment structuring features that the funds are willing to invest beyond what we would expect from traditional VCs and that therefore that the funds in the survey can serve entrepreneurs who fall outside of traditional VC requirements.
These funds are nimble investment vehicles that operate in the very early stages, potentially being the first professional investors supporting companies in their infancy, effectively de-risking and capitalizing early-stage entrepreneurs.
They also have a wide range of return expectations, including repayment multiples, and initial criteria for the investment that are much more flexible than what we typically see in traditional venture capital. It has long been a complaint that sources of capital are too fixated on structures designed only for companies with explosive growth, so it is encouraging that this research shows an emergence of new capital providers exploring alternatives to traditional expectations and structures.
Out of the 100 funds that applied to the Capital Access Lab, and more specifically out of the 20 survey respondents, we have observed that about 50% of the funds have a target raise of less than $10 million and 75% of less than $30 million; that 95% invest in seed stage, and about ~50% in pre-seed and Series A; and that 65% target an initial investment of less than $300,000 per investment.
Toniic, the global action community for impact investing, has also identified the emergence of relatively small and nimble funds (less than 15M in target AUM) leveraging alternative investment structures to address the needs of underserved populations across different investment themes. These includes funds providing loans to farmers to be repaid through a revenue share agreement in order to allow time to the farmers to switch to organic and regenerative agriculture practices and align their cash flows from higher quality produce with the loan repayment, funds providing capital to minority owned businesses in geographies out of the radar of major venture capitalists to facilitate exits, but also funds providing loans to underserved students that can repay their loans only when they start generating income from actual employment.
While this did not apply to the five funds selected for investment by the Capital Access Lab, these smaller funds are much smaller than typical venture capital fund and CDFI, so small in fact that many are unlikely to cover their operating costs as a fund, and instead use the fund as an addition to existing community service programs. These funds primarily target seed stage companies and are using a wide range of alternative investment structures.
In order to support these experimental but smaller funds, it is clearly important to find ways to lower their operating costs. As noted in this review, important costs like legal, including the added costs associated with using new investing and organization structures, insurance and fund administration are high for these funds. It can even be difficult to find fund administration services that will support alternative investment structures. Companies like AngelList are starting to provide some of these services at lower cost but they are still expensive for small funds and they do not offer services to most alternative investment structures. Investors and foundations who wish to support these funds might consider funding start-ups that help provide these services at lower cost to smaller funds.
Agnes Dasewicz, Lead, Capital Access Lab observed that, alternatively, it would be worth evaluating if investments coming from foundations could, when legally allowed, be accompanied by separate resources and donations to cover some administrative expenses and technical assistance. This is fairly common practice with large international funds who often have sidecar vehicles for technical assistance, and we agree that sidecar grants would help further the ability of small funds to continue to innovate.
Social Venture Circle hosted this interactive webinar on Alternative Term Sheets featuring Drew Tulchin (Upspring Associates), Lauren Grattan (Mission Driven Finance), and John Berger (Toniic).
This session explores term sheets and alternative term sheets to see how we can ensure we are bringing in the triple bottom line and our own personal beliefs to our investing and entrepreneurial efforts.
This session was organized by SVC’s member-led working group, The Future of Community Finance. In partnership with the American Sustainable Business Council, Intentional Media, JumpScale, and Opportunity Collaboration. Supported by The Accountkeepers, Bromberger Law, and SustainVC.
Pay For Success is a public-private partnership in which a non-government funder pays the up-front costs for a social service intervention and is repaid by a government actor based on the achievement of previously agreed-upon target outcomes.
The term “pay for success” (“PFS” in shorthand) is most commonly used in the United States. The concept originated in the United Kingdom under the name “social impact bond.” When the concept was introduced in the United States, the name “pay for success” was adopted because not all projects are formulated with a traditional bond structure. In emerging markets, the term “development impact bond” has emerged to describe this concept in an international development context.
CHARACTERISTICS
The principle characteristics of a Pay For Success project are as follows:
A focus on outcomes, rather than outputs. Payments are made based on the outcomes experienced by the people served by the social service intervention, rather than the number of people served. This is a structural shift from how most social services are funded.
Up-front funding by a non-government funder: The social service intervention is paid for by a private investor, philanthropy, or other non-government funder, who can expect to be repaid only if target outcomes are achieved. If the project is unsuccessful — and the target outcomes are not achieved — then that non-government funder is not repaid for the investment. Therefore, taxpayers are not responsible for paying for an intervention that did not work as planned.
HISTORY
The concept was originated by Sir Ronald Cohen in the UK.
The first social impact bond was implemented at Peterborough Prison near York, UK. In that project, a private investor paid for people who were preparing to be released from prison but deemed to be at a higher risk for re-offending to participate in a new recidivism diversion program. The UK government agreed to repay the investor if recidivism among the participants was reduced by a targeted percentage. The project launched in 2010 and concluded in 2015, with findings that showed a reduction in reoffending. Results: https://www.rand.org/randeurope/research/projects/social-impact-bonds.html
In 2010, the US federal government under President Barack Obama began adapting the concept for use by state and local grantees of federal funding from the US Departments of Labor, Education, and Justice. This work was centralized under the White House Domestic Policy Council’s Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation. The first projects in the US launched in 2012.
ACTORS IN PAY FOR SUCCESS
Each pay for success project or initiative has the following actors participating:
Government actor: A government agency is responsible for paying for outcomes upon achievement, based on terms agreed upon by all parties in the project negotiation. Repayment is generally expected to be consistent with the money the government is saving due to the intervention. For example, a reduction in the number of formerly incarcerated people reoffending leads, in theory, to fewer prisoners that the government must support.
Service provider: The social service intervention is provided by a non-profit or for-profit organization. The service provider contracts with the non-government actor making the up-front investment, so they are paid for delivering the intervention regardless of impact. Typically, the service provider is selected by the investor, with review or approval from the government, through a competitive process and must demonstrate expertise or a track record of success in delivering the service to the target population.
Non-government funder: A non-government funder pays the upfront costs of the service provider to deliver the social service intervention to the target population. This non-government actor is often a private investor, but could also be a philanthropy, community foundation, high net worth individual, or other funder. If the social service intervention reaches agreed-upon outcomes, the actor is repaid. If not, the actor is expected to take the loss.
Evaluator: An independent evaluator is contracted to perform an independent evaluation of the social service intervention provided to the target population, to determine whether agreed-upon outcomes were met. The rigor of the evaluation, including the use of a control group, is determined by the parties involved.
Intermediary organization: Most PFS projects have an intermediary organization that serves a mediation and management role. This organization brings the parties together to create the project and agree on the target outcomes to be achieved. The work of the intermediary organization is often funded by philanthropic donations.
Concern that PFS would siphon money from existing social programs and/or private them has not come to fruition. Model is intended to validate/test whether a new service/intervention is more effective then status quo — governments may or may not end up using that information
Evaluations: An independent evaluation is a core part of a pay for success project. The expectations for the rigor of that evaluation have been debated, particularly in the wake of Urban Institute and other early field leaders have argued that PFS project evaluations should be randomized control trials (RCTs) unless there is a compelling reason to use a less rigorous method.
Scalability: Since the launch of the first pay for success projects, a major critique of the model has been the cost of putting projects together. Philanthropic grants are generally still required to fund the 18-to-24-month process.
Concern that governments will not scale successful projects – too early to tell
Capacity building for nonprofits
Case Studies
In 2015, India pioneered the world’s first development impact bond (DIB) where the outcome payer was a private foundation. Read more in the following case study from AVPN:
Contingent Payment Structures are the most common form of Alternative Exits. Unlike a traditional note or loan, the time and/or payment amounts made by these structures are contingent on some other factor like company revenues.
Royalties are a special case of contingent payments as the payment of royalty is contingent on events that trigger a royalty payment, typically the use of intellectually properly. While Royalties are contingent payments the converse is not true and not all contingent payments are royalties. This distinction is important in countries like the United States that have different tax treatment for royalties than other forms of contingent payment.
