Correct Success: Impact investment fund responds to COVID crisis with relief

By Mark Crosswell, managing director, the GoATL Fund, Group Basis for Larger Atlanta

In 2018, Group Basis for Larger Atlanta launched the GoATL Fund, the primary social affect funding fund within the Southeast. The Fund supplies versatile, low-cost debt to nonprofits and social enterprises which are making an affect in areas together with inexpensive housing, training and small enterprise improvement. Up to now, the Fund has supported the event of over 400 models of inexpensive housing, 80 early childhood training slots, over 300 Ok-12 slots and small enterprise development that has created over 120 jobs.

After investing over $eight million in our first two years, we entered 2020 with momentum at our backs and bold plans for the New 12 months. Then a brand new actuality hit with COVID-19. As many had been pressured to do, the GoATL group rapidly shifted focus to assessing the financial fallout and devising pressing aid efforts. It quickly grew to become obvious that these hit hardest by lockdowns and closures had been small companies, college students, frontline healthcare employees and low-income households. In an effort to reply, we and our colleagues studied the CARES Act extensively and started to teach our buyers and basis companions on the fallout. It additionally grew to become clear that the pandemic was disproportionately impacting Black and brown communities: early estimates instructed that over 40% of Black-owned companies have closed, in comparison with simply 17% of white-owned companies.

As summer season started, we shifted our focus from acts of aid to acts of restoration. Impressed by the work of our funding companions, native nonprofits and each nationwide and regional foundations, the GoATL group labored to assist metro Atlanta’s communities by investing within the work of key companions, together with:

Because of our elevated dedication to racial fairness, our investments are making a distinction for underserved populations, resembling:

ANDP’s homebuyers are 66% are Black, 11% are Hispanic or Latinx and three% Asian
LiftFund’s microenterprise purchasers in GA are over 80% BIPOC-owned
Greater than half of ACE’s purchasers are BIPOC-owned companies and most are girls

Wanting forward, the GoATL Fund has recognized a variety of funding alternatives that can leverage the power of companions and proceed driving significant affect locally. Extra particulars on GoATL’s affect thus far and funding alternatives will be present in 2020 Impact Report and GoATL Profile. For an entire take a look at the Fund’s 2020 12 months in overview, or to study extra about investing within the Fund, go here.

Photograph courtesy of Takes a Village Transportation, an ACE shopper.