IMPACTASSETS 50™
An Annual Showcase of Impact Investment Fund Managers
ImpactAssets 50
An Annual Showcase of Impact Investment Fund Managers
Enduring Planet
Climate Change
Decarbonization and Carbon Drawdown
Diversity, Equity and InclusionFirm Overview
Enduring Planet is a climate-focused lender providing founder-friendly working capital to startups and SMBs addressing the climate crisis. We offer innovative products like Climate Grant Advances, Term Loans, and Government PO financing. Leveraging a proprietary, automated lending platform with finance API integrations, we fund businesses in as little as 30 days. We raised our $5.3M pilot Fund in 2022, supported by family offices, private foundations, HNWIs, and DAFs via Impact Assets. In 2024 we launched Enduring Climate Fund 2, completed a first close in May of 2024, and are targeting a final close of the first note offering of $20-40M by May of 2025. To date, we’ve deployed over $16M across 53 transactions across climate sectors. We prioritize underrepresented founders, diverse teams, and companies serving marginalized communities— over 90% of our funding has gone to businesses meeting these criteria, underscoring our commitment to a more inclusive and sustainable future.
Years of Operation: 3 – 4 years
% of Capital from Top 3 Investors: Less than 25%
Enduring Planet supports the transition to a low-carbon economy by providing fast, founder-friendly, non-dilutive working capital to climate entrepreneurs.
Climate startups and SMBs face major challenges in securing funding for R&D, commercialization, and growth. Traditional financing options are scarce, and the limited capital available is often dilutive, expensive, and restrictive, slowing the ability of businesses to scale solutions critical to decarbonization and adaptation. Enduring Planet addresses this gap by supporting U.S.-based companies across the New Climate Economy. The majority of the companies we back have credit-worthy government contracts, dramatically reducing their risk profile in comparison to traditional small businesses or startups. We provide a range of financing instruments and leverage automation and AI to speed up underwriting, simplifying access to capital for entrepreneurs. Our investment thesis prioritizes underrepresented founders, diverse teams, and businesses serving marginalized communities, ensuring that climate solutions are developed by those driving both impact and equity, making the transition to a more sustainable and inclusive future possible.
Enduring Planet offers unique, non-dilutive funding solutions tailored to climate businesses, with minimal collateral requirements, no personal credit checks, and no personal guarantees. Our Climate Grant Advance, Term Loan, and PO Finance products provide working capital for startups, many of whom have state or federal grants or commercial contracts, making us one of the few lenders focused on the critical segment of earlier-stage climate startups. Our streamlined, automated online platform allows clients to complete applications in just 10 minutes, receive term sheets within a week, and get funded in 30 days—versus other lenders who take several months to underwrite. We prioritize underrepresented founders, including women, people of color, diverse teams, and companies serving marginalized communities. As a woman-founded and led company with a globally diverse team, Enduring Planet is committed to driving both climate impact and equity.
Investment Example
New Sun Road (NSR) has secured two $500K Climate Grant Advances from Enduring Planet and is currently in discussions for a third. NSR, a U.S.-based company, was selected for a USTDA-funded project to install solar-powered digital community centers (DCCs) in 10 rural communities in Guatemala, with plans to scale to 3,000 sites. These women-led centers will provide clean energy and connectivity, with NSR training local women to manage the DCCs and teach digital skills. This project highlights NSR's dedication to renewable energy and empowering underserved communities globally. While government funding is reliable, it often requires substantial working capital upfront to execute projects successfully. In NSR’s case, Enduring Planet’s $500K Climate Grant Advances provided the working capital needed to meet tight deadlines and accelerate scaling. This financial support allowed NSR to start the project quickly and stay on track, delivering impactful solutions to rural communities.
Leadership and Team
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Erin Davis – Fund Manager, COO and Co-Founder More Info
Erin is a seasoned investor and operator and brings nearly a decade of impact investment credit, and operations experience to the Enduring Planet team. Prior to Enduring Planet, Erin co-founded Social Investment Managers and Advisors (SIMA) and served as a Vice President for 6 years, establishing three private debt funds with a total capitalization of ~$180M focused on the off-grid and financial access sector in emerging markets. Earlier, Erin worked for SPBD (Tonga) managing their microfinance impact assessment and FINCA International building out a new social enterprise and financial innovation department. |
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Dimitry Gershenson – CEO and Co-Founder More Info
Dimitry started Enduring Planet building on his 10+ years of experience across climate tech, operations, and impact investing. Prior to Enduring Planet, Dimitry led M&A and served as COO for Rango Wireless, an Enduring Ventures portfolio company. Before that, Dimitry built Meta’s Energy Access program, a $15M+ investing initiative that enabled energy access for 3M people and unlocked nearly $500M in additional capital in underserved markets like Kenya and India. |
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Joshua Krafchin – Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder More Info
Josh is a coder, digital product creator, user interface designer and seasoned marketer who has created millions of leads and $100s of millions of revenue for a range of startups and large companies across his career. Prior to Enduring Planet, Josh co-founded the political organization Swing Left and founded the digital marketing agency Clever Zebo. He's a seasoned operator who starts viral movements and picks fights that deserve to be won, like ensuring the long-term habitability of Earth for humanity. |
Financial Performance
Impact Performance
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Percentage of Total Assets Under
Management that are Impact Investments: |
100%
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We exclusively invest in companies that operate in the new climate economy; all borrowers must be directly or indirectly contributing to emission abatement, carbon removal, or increasing adaptation/resilience. We also invest with an inclusivity lens by prioritizing investment in underrepresented founders, diverse teams, and companies tackling issues disproportionately affecting marginalized communities. Our proprietary risk scorecard also integrates diversity as a factor in scoring. Both of the aforementioned elements are entrenched in our corporate DNA as a Delaware Public Benefit Corporation. Each quarter, we also collect data on diversity and impact indicators and require our portfolio companies to report on these impact numbers. This helps us track impact and additionality.
Enduring Planet's proprietary underwriting scorecard favors founder diversity, board diversity, management diversity, and employee diversity and checks for DEI policies in place (e.g. a company is more likely to get funding because they score higher). We review any impact reporting the company already does and ask all companies to commit to reporting on diversity indicators on a quarterly basis.
Impact Tracking and Monitoring
Learn More
1355 NW Everett St, Suite 100, Portland, OR 97209 USA
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