IMPACTASSETS 50™
An Annual Showcase of Impact Investment Fund Managers
ImpactAssets 50
An Annual Showcase of Impact Investment Fund Managers
De-Carceration Fund LP
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
EducationFirm Overview
The De-Carceration Fund is causing the "Ethical Disruption of the Criminal Justice System". The fund will invest and support highly innovative enterprises that are working to eliminate the suffering caused by the US Criminal Justice System through a radically different fund model that is focused on returning power to those who have had it taken away from them.
Years of Operation: Less than 3 years
% of Capital from Top 3 Investors: Less than 25%
The US Criminal Justice System directly impacts 6.6 million people costing more than $80 Billion per year; this profoundly broken system is marred by racial disparities, extractive business practices, and misaligned incentives, but the opportunity exists to find highly innovative business models that address the injustices of mass incarceration.
In our theory of impact, we break the total system down into three main goals:
Reduce the number of individuals entering the system (Prevent Entry)
Reduce the negative impact on individuals and families impacted by the system (Reduce Suffering), and
Support a successful transition out of the system (End the Cycle). The fund will make equity investments in seed-stage through expansion-stage companies that will generate social and financial returns. It is expected that the majority of the portfolio will consist of companies with revenues of $0 – 5 million at the time of initial investment.
The De-Carceration Fund is differentiated from its peer group through its approach to managing impact. This process is enabled using three fund programs: The investment committee includes a cohort of three members responsible for approving any investment’s impact. These members have veto rights on any deal that the fund evaluates. All three members have lived experience in the criminal justice system and founder experience covering all three primary impact goals.
The fund has built connections into leading nonprofits focused on criminal justice reform. These organizations will serve as a source of research as measures need to be evaluated for efficacy and as an informal oversight group that will receive regular reporting on fund activity. Impact*Able is a 3rd party impact assessment organization. For every investment opportunity, the Impact*Able team will identify key drivers of impact, project future impact of the investment, and assess the company’s total value of public benefit.
Investment Example
Uptrust assists clients in overcoming barriers to appearance, significantly reducing the rate of incarceration for technical violations without placing additional work on public defenders, probation officers, or court staff. Uptrust is focused on eliminating the 1 million technical violations that result in avoidable incarceration every year. Integrating with Uptrust allows public defenders, probation officers, or court staff to automatically send the right push notifications and text messages to their clients.
Traditional court reminders like robocalls and one-way text messages fail to reach a large percentage of individuals, as they rely on inaccurate and missing phone numbers and fail to address the underlying issues that drive non-compliance. Manually doing the work takes up valuable time for staff with heavy caseloads. Uptrust anticipates generating a total social impact of more than $450 million in direct public savings by reducing failure to appear, issued bench warrants, rearrests, and incarceration.
Leadership and Team
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Chris Bentley – Managing Director More Info
Chris is the founder and Managing Principal of the Decarceration Fund. Chris has over 12 years of experience in impact investing. Most recently Chris was an Investment Manager at Serious Change Investments. Serious Change is an early-stage impact venture fund founded by Impact Investment pioneer Josh Mailman. While at Serious Change, Chris served as the lead investment professional for the investment in Pigeon.ly and served as Board Observer. Prior to that, Chris was a Principal at SustainVC. Sustain VC was the General Partner of the Patient Capital Collaborative (PCC) family of impact investment funds. While with Sustain VC, Chris was the lead investment professional in Edovo and has served on the Board. |
Financial Performance
Impact Performance
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Percentage of Total Assets Under
Management that are Impact Investments: |
100%
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This impact fund will invest and support highly innovative enterprises working to eliminate the suffering caused by the US Criminal Justice System. It will accomplish this through a radically different fund model focusing on returning power to those who have had it taken away from them. We break the total system down into three main goals. 1) Reduce the number of individuals entering the system (Prevent Entry) 2) Reduce the negative impact on individuals and families impacted by the system (Reduce Suffering), and 3) Support a successful transition out of the system (End the Cycle). All investments must materially impact one or more of our primary impact goals. Company incentives must be aligned with positive outcomes. Finally, the profit motive for companies must not derail impact.
In addition to systematically targeting companies where impact is integral to the product or service, The De-Carceration Fund also considers the companies’ intrafirm social/environmental sustainability practices. We have a preference for investing in Public Benefit companies and look for companies with diversity in the founders and management team. We also prioritize companies with systems impacted individuals on the founding or management team.
Impact Tracking and Monitoring
Learn More
336 King of Prussia Rd, Radnor, PA 19087 USA
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