Fuel Your Business Growth and Impact

We seek to invest in social enterprises, including those owned by people of color and real estate projects that are catalyzing power in communities of color. We look for those who share our belief that a sustainable, inclusive and equitable economy is possible, as well as who owns, works at, and holds power, and what capacity the investment has to build financial, social, and political power for communities of color.

At the heart of our approach is the deployment of integrated capital, which means blending investment types—grants, debt, equity—to meet entrepreneurs and their enterprises where they are. We structure transactions using a variety of innovative financial structures:

We believe integrated capital is a catalyst for economic justice. It’s central to every aspect of our work.

We invest across stages, including Pre-Seed, Seed, Start-up, and Growth stages. We typically want to see  your enterprise generating revenue or has customer demand. That being said, we encourage entrepreneurs to connect with us as early on as they’d like—we regularly provide coaching and technical assistance to enterprises that are not yet ready for BII investment to help them prepare for investment down the road.

The process varies and is very dependent on a prospective company’s investment preparedness. That said,  many investments are completed within 4-5 months following the initial interest form.

Businesses and real estate projects seeking investment first go through our relationship-based due diligence, which considers both the financial viability of the investment and its alignment with our investment criteria. 

During this time, our team also frequently delivers technical assistance to enterprises, with topics ranging from strategy and financial projections to workplace democracy and equitable ownership. We do not use credit scores or other low-touch, historically biased means of financial evaluation. Instead, we seek to gain a deep understanding of the financial health, positioning, and people behind each enterprise to make an assessment of impact, risk and possible return.

Once an enterprise passes through our team’s due diligence, the team presents to the BII Investment Committee. The Investment Committee is appointed by the BII board to employ their expertise in evaluating opportunities along our investment thesis. Investment Committee members bring a wide variety of skill sets: finance backgrounds, successful entrepreneurs, solidarity economy principles, angel investors, and nonprofit leaders. They vote on each investment, either recommending the deal to the board for approval or passing on the opportunity at this time. 

The board provides final approval on each deal to ensure that our investment activity is accountable to our mission. 

We look at both the financial viability of potential investments and their alignment with our investment criteria. On the financial side, we review key financial documents, business plans, projections, and other investment specific factors to develop our assessment. On the impact side, we consider a number of factors relating to Economic Justice, Climate Resilience, Governance and Power, and Enterprise Health. We also form an assessment of the enterprise or project’s people—getting to know who we invest in is a key benefit of a relationship-based approach.

As integrated capital investors, we believe the best way to support organizations and build a resilient economy is by providing supplemental resources to portfolio companies in addition to our financial capital. We refer to these resources as Technical Assistance (TA). Our TA offerings include: 

• Financial Modeling: We can analyze historical performance and review or create projections.
• Social Capital: We leverage our network for sales leads, sector experts, other investors and funders, potential partners, or other advisors and mentors.
• Coaching: Our team members make themselves available to talk through opportunities or challenges and provide advice
• Promotion: We use our platform (social media, website and newsletters) to lift up success stories.
• Specialized TA: We offer connections to trusted, local providers of Bookkeeping, Human Resources, and Marketing & Communications support. We offer grants to subsidize a portion of these costs.
• Portfolio Advisory Board: We offer our portfolio companies additional opportunities to connect, build their networks and learn from each other. Each year, we invite portfolio company leaders to join our Portfolio Advisory Board which offers: peer discussion groups, access to strategic advisors, peer networking and strategic relationship building, and sustainability practices.