Who We Are
Global Partnerships (GP) is an impact-first investment fund manager dedicated to expanding opportunity for people living in poverty. Since GP’s founding in 1994 and the launch of its first fund in 2005, GP and its affiliated funds have invested in sustainable solutions that empower people to earn a living and improve their lives. GP and its affiliated funds have deployed $767.4 million in impact investments to 197 social enterprise partners, bringing meaningful impact to an estimated 33.4 million lives in 33 countries (cumulative as of December 31, 2023).
What is Impact-First Investing?
Impact-first investing means investing in a way that seeks the highest possible social impact, while seeking to preserve capital for investors.
Impact-first investing is distinctly different from return-first investing, which seeks the highest possible financial return (often without consideration of social or environmental consequences), and from philanthropy, which seeks the highest social impact without any preservation of capital.
We believe that impact-first investing has an essential role to play in advancing sustainable solutions to poverty for millions of people worldwide.
What Does Impact Mean to Global Partnerships?
All of our funds’ impact-first investing is aimed at empowering low-income and marginalized people to earn a living, provide the basic necessities of life for their families, and improve their lives. We aim to deliver high social impact for people living in poverty, by investing to:
Broaden opportunity across different facets of poverty including, but not limited to, economic opportunity, education, energy, health, housing, sanitation, and water.
Deepen inclusion of poorer and underserved people, including women and the rural poor.
Serve millions through sustainable and scalable solutions that can positively impact the lives of millions of people.
Improve lives by empowering people to earn a living and meet their basic needs.
We do this while seeking to preserve capital with a modest financial return for all fund investors.
What We Do
GP creates and manages impact-first investment funds. We use capital from these funds to make loans and early stage investments to social enterprises that serve people living in poverty throughout Latin America, the Caribbean, and sub-Saharan Africa. Click here to learn more:
Our Team
We are staffed by a team in offices in Seattle, Washington; Bogotá, Colombia; and Nairobi, Kenya.
