What if your charitable donations didn’t just support causes—but actually helped build impactful businesses? In this episode of The Angel Next Door, host Marcia Dawood gives a quick 7-minute overview of the growing interest in investing with philanthropic capital and answers some of the most common questions about how it works. Using insights from past conversations with experts like Sally Boulter of Impact Assets and Patrice and Leah Brickman of Inspire Access, Marcia breaks down how Donor-Advised Funds (DAFs) and nonprofit organizations are revolutionizing the way we think about philanthropy and investment. You'll learn about: - How DAFs work – A simple, tax-advantaged way to invest in for-profit impact companies while keeping funds designated for charitable giving. - Inspire Access’ unique model – A 501(c)(3) that allows donors to contribute directly, ensuring capital reaches underrepresented founders working on innovative solutions. - Non-accredited investors can participate too – You don’t need to have a certain amount of wealth or income to make a donation; now more people than ever can back mission-driven startups. Instead of just ‘making a donation’, discover how to create a lasting impact by strategically investing in businesses that align with your values—all while staying within a philanthropic framework. Tune in now to rethink how your giving can fuel innovation and drive meaningful change! Marcia highlights Sally Boulter's discussion on donor advised funds (DAFs) as a means for accessible impact investing. She also revisits her conversation with Wendy Ryan, who shares her Learn Lead Lift framework, promoting leadership through clarity and collaboration and advocating for investment in diverse founders. Lastly, Marcia reflects on her dialogue with Cammie and Sandi from the Money Tales podcast, who emphasize reshaping our money beliefs. In case you missed any of this great content, you can get a recap here and also go back and listen to the full episodes: https://pod.link/1586445642
What if your charitable donations didn’t just support causes—but actually helped build impactful businesses?
In this episode of The Angel Next Door, host Marcia Dawood gives a quick 7-minute overview of the growing interest in investing with philanthropic capital and answers some of the most common questions about how it works. Using insights from past conversations with experts like Sally Boulter of Impact Assets and Patrice and Leah Brickman of Inspire Access, Marcia breaks down how Donor-Advised Funds (DAFs) and nonprofit organizations are revolutionizing the way we think about philanthropy and investment.
You'll learn about:
- How DAFs work – A simple, tax-advantaged way to invest in for-profit impact companies while keeping funds designated for charitable giving.
- Inspire Access’ unique model – A 501(c)(3) that allows donors to contribute directly, ensuring capital reaches underrepresented founders working on innovative solutions.
- Non-accredited investors can participate too – You don’t need to have a certain amount of wealth or income to make a donation; now more people than ever can back mission-driven startups.
Instead of just ‘making a donation’, discover how to create a lasting impact by strategically investing in businesses that align with your values—all while staying within a philanthropic framework.
Tune in now to rethink how your giving can fuel innovation and drive meaningful change!
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Marcia Dawood
Hi everyone and welcome back to the Angel Next Door podcast. Since we started exploring the concept of investing with philanthropic capital, interest has surged along with a lot of questions. So in this short episode, I'm going to simplify the process and break it down step by step of what it means to invest in a for profit company using philanthropic dollars, the dollars that you would use in order to donate to charity. This innovative approach allows you to generate potential financial returns while driving meaningful social and environmental impact. And I'll explain how you can leverage a donor advised fund or a DAF to invest in for profit companies. And I'm going to reintroduce Inspire Access, a 501c3 nonprofit that enables you to donate and allocate funds toward for profit ventures led by underrepresented founders. So, so let's dive in. Philanthropic capital refers to funds that are earmarked for charitable purposes but are also invested in ways that generate financial returns.
Marcia Dawood
Unlike traditional donations that go directly to the causes, these investments allow capital to be recycled and continuously support various initiatives. This can be done through structures like Donor advised fund or DAFs, which offer tax advantages while aligning investments with the donor's values. Here's a clip from Sally Bolter from Impact Assets explaining what a donor advised fund is. Sally was recently on the Angel Next Door podcast.
Sally Boulter
So for those of you who don't know what a donor advised fund is, it's a.
Sally Boulter
It's.
Sally Boulter
I've heard it called a philanthropic checkbook and it is people open them when they've had they when they want to make a tax deduction. So they or take a tax deduction. So maybe they've sold a business or something and they want to take a tax deduction in that particular here. But they don't necessarily know where they want to grant their money out to. So they'll open a Donor Buys fund account, take the tax deduction in that year and then grant money out over time. There are many donor buys funds out there. There are some focus that are like commercial donor vice funds like your Fidelity, Schwab Vanguard and then there are several community foundations wherever you're based. I live in Baltimore.
Sally Boulter
There's Baltimore Community Foundation. Every community seems to have a community foundation and their focus is really on helping those communities. Now an impact assets niche in the space is around impact investing. When we were started, our founders were looking around at the world of finance and looking at donor advised funds and seeing all this untapped capital that could that was put aside by people who care about the world, care about People and they had set it aside to be granted out, but all that money was sitting there. Trillions of dollars are sitting in donor advice funds that have yet to be activated. And so that's our, really our, our niche is that while you're waiting to grant money out, all of your investment options are impact investment options.
Marcia Dawood
Sally explained how donor advised funds offer a simple and effective way to invest philanthropic capital while making a lasting impact. Through platforms like impact Assets, individuals including non accredited investors can set up a daf, complete a straightforward compliance questionnaire and direct funds toward for profit impact driven companies. A compelling example is the Next Wave Impact fund where investors pooled resources to support for profit meaningful ventures. Any returns generated from these investments flow back into the DAF and will then be directed to the charity of choice of the donors. Now that we've talked about impact assets, let's talk about Inspire Access. Wow, they sound very similar and often the two organizations get mixed up. So here is Patrisse and Leah Brickman of Inspire Access who were also on the podcast a while back.
Leah Brickman
With that Inspire Access was born and it was really built to address two critical issues, obviously first and most importantly that less than 3% of investment capital goes to women and people of color while we know they are building companies at equal if not higher rates than their counterparts. And the other issue, that $234 billion is sitting in donor advised funds. And we really kind of saw this as an opportunity to mobilize that capital that is sitting there and direct it towards mission aligned investments and for profits led by underrepresented founders who have historically lacked access to this investment capital. And so that is what we built with the 501C3 Inspire Access. And we know that not only will this help bridge and narrow the investment gap, but it also is unlocking immense potential and new ideas, solutions, successful companies that us as a global community can really benefit from.
Marcia Dawood
Amazing.
Leah Brickman
So somebody can take money and put it into a donor advised fund or in this case they could give it to you because you are a 501c3 charity. And then instead of that money going directly to a charity, it can kind of be diverted for a little while on its own little path to make some more money that will eventually go to the charity. But in the meantime it's going to go to a for profit company and help them to be able to build up their business so that then they can turn around and give that back to the donor advised fund or in this case you, so that then it can be given back to a 501C3 so the person who's the donor gets.
Leah Brickman
The tax write off.
Marcia Dawood
They will never see the money themselves again, but they can put their money to work in order to do good in the world.
Leah Brickman
Yes, exactly.
Patrice Brickman
Marcia just said that. I wrote that down because that's just another way that for to let people understand like your money is just going to actually go out and do some good in the world.
Marcia Dawood
And there at the end, you heard me summarize basically what Inspire Access is doing. And there you have it. A quick summary on Investing with Philanthropic Capital. This method not only furthers your philanthropic goals, but also can leverage financial returns to amplify impact. Whether you're looking to support underrepresented founders or invest in sustainable initiatives using a donor advised fund, or donating directly to Inspire Access, which then invests into a for profit company, this can be a transformative way to put your philanthropic dollars to work. Thank you for tuning in to the Angel Next Door podcast and make sure to check out the show Notes for more information about Inspire Access and Impact assets. Stay tuned for our next episode. Thanks for listening.