Skip to content

Patient Capital

Solar lamp representatives smile cheerfully at large function in India

We deploy philanthropic capital to high-innovation, high-impact enterprises that shape markets to break the cycle of poverty.

The power of patience

deployed between 2001 and 2020
companies invested in across 5 regions
return on investment over 20 years

Where philanthropy and investing meet

A staggering 5.3 billion people still live in poverty, largely neglected by the marketplace. Philanthropy is critical for Patient Capital, allowing us to take outsized risk for outsized impact so that no one is left behind. 

Thanks to its philanthropic nature, Patient Capital can experiment in markets with challenging operating environments, underdeveloped infrastructure, and weak currencies.

Watch the TED Talk

Patient Capital has more flexible time horizons for returns, enabling large-scale, deep, and lasting solutions to problems of poverty.

Investment principles

Patient Capital is laser-focused on the poor. It exists to improve the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in the world.

Our approach

Patient Capital prioritizes impact, but never loses sight of financial accountability. For every dollar invested to date, we’ve received 91 cents back.

Our impact
Host Jacqueline Novogratz speaks at TEDWomen 2017 — Bridges, November 1-3, 2017, Orpheum Theatre, New Orleans, Louisiana. Photo: Stacie McChesney / TED
Two workers place coconut meat into machine to be ground in a East African processing facility
Women sits on bed with her child in a swaddle in Indian home
Solar panel array on a East Africa field

Capital that’s backed by philanthropy can transform markets.

Patient Capital is most successful when used to build untested, unproven markets or disrupt broken ones.

Acumen fellow Andres Felipe Gonzalez Espinosa sits on a sidewalk in a Colombian neighborhood
Course

Acumen’s Patient Capital: Lessons from 20 Years of Impact Investing

Investors can learn how to practice the principles of Patient Capital, including how to support social entrepreneurs on their journey to impact.

More about Acumen