IMPACTASSETS 50™
An Annual Showcase of Impact Investment Fund Managers
ImpactAssets 50
An Annual Showcase of Impact Investment Fund Managers
Mission Driven Finance, LLC
Affordable Housing
Climate Change
Place-based ImpactFirm Overview
Mission Driven Finance is an impact investment firm dedicated to making markets where markets have been broken. Built from the ground up with a single purpose—to make it easy to invest in your community—all our funds and structured products are designed to close financial gaps in order to close opportunity gaps. Our core investment strategies are focused on missing middle business financing, emerging managers and community initiatives, and care economy real estate. Operating since 2016, Mission Driven Finance is a Certified B Corporation investment adviser and asset manager with over $225M under administration. Our goal is to mobilize over $1B assets into community by 2027, increasing inclusive and equitable access to education, health, and wealth.
Years of Operation: 5 – 9 years
% of Capital from Top 3 Investors: Less than 25%
Our mission is to make markets where markets have been broken, with an emphasis on inclusive private credit and real estate strategies.
Bold visions, innovative enterprises, and great programs deserve the opportunity to succeed. At the same time, many private capital allocators want to invest in things they care about, but gaps in the impact investment infrastructure leave those two disconnected. Our core investment strategies get capital flowing where it normally doesn’t—but should: missing middle business financing, care economy real estate, and emerging managers and community initiatives. Missing middle business financing helps businesses too large for microfinance but too small or complex for conventional financing by offering financial solutions without credit scores or personal guarantees. Our Care Access Real Estate (CARE) REIT advances a healthier care economy, growing and stabilizing child care with supportive residential and commercial real estate investments. Additionally, we help other fund managers, project sponsors, and intermediaries with financing and infrastructure they need to navigate around friction in the capital landscape and create impact in their communities.
Our vision is to shift financial systems that perpetuate poverty into ones that can eradicate it. By changing the pace and changing the face of capital allocation, we can reconnect capital with community. Government and philanthropy aren’t sufficient to solve our most pressing problems, we have to get private capital in play. We understand that the history of exclusion and bias is part of what has prevented capital from flowing, and choose instead to embrace diversity, reduce extraction, and distribute power. We are an intentional collaborator, seeking opportunities where MDF can fill in the gaps and get capital to move, always with an inclusive approach that reduces extraction and avoids access-limiting mechanisms such as credit scores and personal guarantees. We strive to take bespoke, market-making initiatives from idea to scale, working with amazing investors, communities, and capital entrepreneurs across the US.
Investment Example
MDF Capital Partners LP ("MDFCP") was established to address challenges faced by fund managers bringing impact investments to market, with a focus on creating scalable solutions. A key example is MDFCP's partnership with Founders First Capital Partners ("FFCP"), an impact-focused lender led by Kim Folsom. Based in San Diego, FFCP empowers underrepresented founders—including women, people of color, and veterans—through revenue-based funding, term loans, and advisory services. To address capital restrictions and timing gaps in funding that created bottlenecks for FFCP, MDFCP structured a line of credit for FFCP’s Change Catalyst Fund that not only bridged these gaps but also served as a replicable model for other emerging fund managers. This innovative approach demonstrates the scalability of MDFCP’s solutions as a proof of concept for future use, amplifying its impact in empowering underserved communities.
Leadership and Team
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Lauren Grattan – Co-Founder & Chief Community Officer More Info
Lauren’s background in nonprofit development made her eager to activate more capital for social change, leading her to co-found Mission Driven Finance. As Chief Community Officer, she leads the design of community-driven strategy, providing a frame for both internal culture & partner relationships. Prior to building Mission Driven Finance, she spent nearly 10 years fundraising for a wide variety of nonprofits—from large universities to small, volunteer-run initiatives. Lauren proudly serves on the steering committee of the Inclusive Capital Collective and on the board of Business for Good San Diego. |
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David Lynn – Co-Founder & CEO More Info
David Lynn has been working in the financial and philanthropic sectors for over 20 years. He found a way to blend those two worlds in 2016 as the founding CEO of Mission Driven Finance, a private impact investment firm dedicated to building a financial system that ensures good businesses have access to sufficient, affordable capital. Prior to focusing on impact investing, David specialized in private investment management, including reporting and risk management. |
Financial Performance
Impact Performance
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Percentage of Total Assets Under
Management that are Impact Investments: |
100%
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While specific impact frameworks vary for each fund that we manage, every investment that we make has intentional impact on at least one dimension of inclusive economic opportunity, including ownership/leadership, workforce development and quality jobs, and/or community impact from the goods and services of the portfolio holding, as well as investor contribution and additionality. Aspects of our IMM framework include: (i) Leadership representative of the community they operate in and serve; (ii) Share of people of color, women, or other populations with barriers in the workforce; (iii) Intentional quality jobs being created in the workforce and/or path to equity ownership opportunities for employees; (iv) Products or services produced by the organization specifically or disproportionately benefit low-income communities and communities of color; (v) Products or services produced by the organization specifically increase inclusive & equitable access to food, climate, health, education, or housing
Diversity is not an afterthought for us, but is core to our ability to both source deal flow and underwrite effectively. Our experienced team comes from a variety of backgrounds, often having worked in multiple communities and industries, and is able to partner sensitively with traditionally underserved communities. Internally, we encourage intense dialogue from differing perspectives to uncover opportunities and weaknesses in borrowers and in ourselves. When underwriting, we actively seek out and support companies that both represent and serve overlooked and underestimated communities through their ownership, core leadership team, employees, and/or customers.
Impact Tracking and Monitoring
Learn More
2247 San Diego Ave #135, San Diego, CA 92110 USA
Apply for the IA 50 2022
The application period to become an ImpactAssets 50 2022 Fund Manager will open in September 2021!
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