Partner Profile | CapShift

Written by: Julia Mazzola

CapShift, founded in 2018 by leaders of MissionPoint Partners and Fidelity Asset Management, aims to empower financial and philanthropic institutions and their clients to invest in their vision for a better tomorrow. The company provides rigorously researched, accessible impact investing and recoverable grant opportunities to donor advised fund holders, family offices, advisors, and foundations.

CapShift offers its support through two main avenues: a research platform that can be used to identify and analyze opportunities, and an advisory role, wherein CapShift acts as a philanthropic and/or registered investment advisor engaging directly with clients’ impact portfolios.

What sets CapShift apart is its top-of-the-funnel approach: CapShift seeks to comprehensively understand the breadth of the marketplace and connects with domain partners that have expertise in specific areas. This unique strategy allows clients to explore a wide range of impact opportunities and make better-informed decisions. Traditionally, pursuing impact in investing was accessible only to a limited set of players with an in-house team of full-time staff members. CapShift’s solutions enable impact-minded individuals and institutions to reevaluate the possibilities with their capital, making catalytic investing more accessible.

“There’s over $1.4 trillion of philanthropic capital from foundations and DAFs here in the US, and only a small fraction of that is going out for impact every year,” explained Jordana Pleat, CapShift’s Senior Director of Impact Investments. “By providing sourcing, due diligence, and building impact portfolios, we serve as an end-to-end support system for those looking to engage in this kind of catalytic investing without the need to start from scratch.”

A notable collaboration between CapShift and Blue Forest started in late 2020 when Zach Knight and members of the CapShift team worked together on Blue Forest’s first recoverable grant opportunity. Recoverable grants are a unique financial tool used by non-profit organizations. Unlike many traditional grants that are one-time, non-repayable contributions, recoverable grants are designed to be repaid over time, either partially or in full. Nonprofits may utilize recoverable grants to access essential capital for growth, especially when seeking to scale their operations or develop revenue-generating activities. By providing a path for recovery, these grants offer a flexible and innovative way for donors to support nonprofits while offering the potential for the funds to be recycled to address future social and environmental challenges. In Blue Forest’s first recoverable grant offering, donors provided recoverable grants to Blue Forest to support operations for scaling the Forest Resilience Bond (FRB), with the recovery of these multi-year grants conditioned on Blue Forest achieving future growth and revenue targets.

More recently, CapShift has supported Blue Forest’s efforts to expand the available capital pool for the FRB Catalyst Facility. CapShift’s goal in collaborating with organizations like Blue Forest is to expand the opportunities available to clients and, ultimately, better connect donors and investors to compelling, high-impact opportunities that align with their interests and needs.

“My hope is that Blue Forest continues to test, innovate, and scale, striving to identify new pathways to market viability as well as utilizing catalytic capital to support solutions for the next critical challenge the industry faces,” voiced Pleat. “Blue Forest is poised to have a substantial impact on the sector, shaping the way investors and donors think about opportunities in the forest restoration and conservation space.”

Both Blue Forest and CapShift serve as intermediaries in the impact investment space, dedicated to addressing critical challenges, promoting positive change in the world through bold solutions, and helping investors and donors understand the transformative potential of their capital. In recent years, CapShift has been encouraged by impact investors’ growing interest in being catalytic with their capital. Through continued momentum, the company envisions a future where philanthropic capital actively supports catalytic investments or recoverable grant opportunities.

“The vast majority of philanthropic capital is sitting on the sidelines, ready and eager to support impact investments. We encourage institutions and individuals to think about what tools are in their toolbox. There are resources in this sector they can use to get started and think more creatively about where their dollars are deployed,” concluded Pleat.