International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGOs) have traditionally played a crucial role in addressing global challenges, providing humanitarian aid and fostering sustainable development. By leveraging their extensive networks, local knowledge and deep-rooted trust within communities, they have delivered critical services and implemented development projects in the world’s most underserved areas. Some of the largest INGOs exemplify this reach: in 2022 alone, Oxfam impacted 15.6 million people, the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement supported 160.7 million globally and CARE International reached 170 million, illustrating the scale at which they mobilize resources and deliver transformative outcomes. Their mandates and effective use of resources have allowed them to achieve investor additionality — generating outcomes that would not have occurred without their intervention. They have pursued this additional impact through both financial additionality, such as providing grants or running programs with a catalytic mindset, and non-financial additionality, including offering technical assistance.

We seek to explore the motivations behind INGOs' interest in impact investing, showcasing different pathways available to do so, and shedding light on key challenges they might encounter, as well as opportunities to amplify their impact. The insights presented in this report are primarily based on in-depth interviews, conducted by Impact Europe, with ten INGOs, nine of which have their headquarters in Europe; additional desk research complemented these interviews.

As readers engage with this report, it is important to consider three contextual factors: 1) The sample size may not adequately capture the wide range of viewpoints of all INGOs involved in impact investing, even though it serves as a representative sample of those operating in Europe; 2) The available literature on INGOs engaging in impact investing is currently limited, which may restrict the depth of our analysis; 3) The core constituency of INGOs we consulted understands additionality in a way that aligns closely with our definition11 and considers themselves as pursuers of additionality through their activities, both in financial and non-financial ways. While we acknowledge that this concept may be relatively unfamiliar to some INGOs that are newly exploring the impact investing space, we will consistently employ this definition throughout the paper to maintain clarity and coherence in our analysis.

The key role of guarantees is to crowd in investors and open new markets. This is achieved by:

solving collateral deficiency challenges;
closing the gap between perceived and actual risk; and
absorbing portions of risk so that lenders can enter new markets with lower risk

However, guarantees are not a silver bullet to bypass credit processes e.g., business documentation (registration, business plans, financials, etc), nor do they serve as an exemption to finance unbankable deals. Measuring the effectiveness of guarantees is not standardized and the context of the guarantee (e.g., sector, region, lender) must be considered when comparing metrics such as utilization, catalyzed capital, or additionality. While the ultimate aim of guarantees is to be made redundant, this goal is unlikely to be met in the short term for agriculture as a sector and in SSA given the sector’s profile i.e., mainly fueled by smallholder farmers who are deemed risky because of informality, largely non-commercial farm models and the sector’s vulnerabilities resulting from climate risk. There are several opportunities for donors to support lending to agriculture across the value chain to build the market using an ecosystem approach to increase agri-lending.

This country report explores the evolving landscape of social procurement in Malaysia, focusing on how impact-driven businesses, including social enterprises, engage with corporate clients and the challenges they face in supplying their products and services. Social procurement, which leverages purchasing power to generate both social and environmental benefits alongside economic value, has gained increasing attention globally in recent years. Recognizing the need for greater market understanding, the Malaysia Impact Alliance (MYImpact) and Yunus Social Business (YSB) initiated this project to provide visibility for impact-driven businesses seeking corporate buyers and to analyze their needs in supplying to corporations.

The key findings of this study highlight that most impact-driven businesses in Malaysia operate on a small scale, facing significant barriers in accessing financing and meeting the operational standards required by corporate buyers. Limited resources, capacity constraints, and lack of long-term visibility and commitment from corporate clients often hinder their ability to secure sustainable corporate partnerships. Finally, the report suggests recommendations to enhance social procurement in Malaysia. These include conducting market research and matchmaking events to connect impact-driven businesses with corporate buyers, facilitating stronger B2B partnerships, a capacity-building program to support impact-driven businesses in enhancing their B2B sales capabilities by providing expert insights and peer advice on positioning themselves as preferred suppliers and engaging effectively with corporate clients. 

If there is one sector in India that has witnessed visible, drastic change in the 21st century, it has to be that of sports. Consider this- at the turn of the century, India was considered as a one-sport nation, namely, a cricketing nation. Even in cricket, India was for most part, an “alsoran”. If you were to read any media coverage of India’s sports sector in the 90s and the early 2000s, you would notice an oft-repeated lament that Cricket in India grabbed all the eyeballs and investments, and all other sports were in a state of poverty. While much of the lament was true then, the narrative has been changing slowly, yet progressively over the last 25 years. 

This White Paper explores how such multi-stakeholder collaboration, matching and funding can happen. In answering the “how”, we have discussed various blended finance approaches case studies derived from their deployment in other social sectors, which could be adapted and deployed for raising funding within the sporting ecosystem, be it for building sporting infrastructure or for developing community sport or for achieving Olympic/Paralympic glory. Within the Indian context, the advent of the Social Stock Exchange provides for yet another exciting social financing mechanism to be explored in the days ahead. We also provide two recent example of Social Stock Exchange listings for readers to assess this platform’s potential.