Program-Related Investments (PRI)
Why is it that private foundations spend so little of their endowment on mission investing? Is there an opportunity to make it bigger?
In this paper you will find an explanation of the barriers to mission investing, also known as Program Related Investment and Mission Related Investment, and a concluding hypothesis about what it will take to help remove the barriers.
Educating foundation leadership, building foundation staff expertise, improving data quality and lowering the cost of making a mission investment are all issues to understand and address. If our hypothesis is correct, the time is now to build the necessary data, education and support capabilities to help private foundations better access private sector investment tools to advance their mission.
PRI in Action
SeaChange: An Opt-In Approach to Program Related Investment
In this paper, SeaChange Capital Partners describe how they have put PRI in action through the New York Pooled PRI Fund (NYPRI), a flexible, high-impact loans to New York City nonprofits while also offering attractive program-related investment PRI opportunities to foundations. With 12 participating foundations, NYPRI has facilitated increased PRI-making by its participants and provided loans to 19 nonprofits that would not otherwise have had access to capital for their projects.
Read how NYPRI combines an efficient investment process with an “opt-in” funding model that could be used by other foundations to help them invest their capital in nonprofits in their own communities.
