About Mercy Corps Ventures

Mercy Corps sees complex global challenges as an invitation to pioneer paths out of poverty, to forge novel partnerships and to create solutions that break through entrenched challenges. But the traditional grant-based model of funding international development can be limiting. It rarely promotes the flexibility and experimentation required to test new models that could sustainably deliver social benefit to millions of people in the developing world.

Social entrepreneurs have the talent, drive and versatility to design products and services to positively impact millions of people. Motivated to create a better tomorrow, they embrace risk and deploy disruptive business models, innovative distribution approaches and transformative technologies to solve many of the biggest challenges of our time.

Unfortunately, these ambitious innovators are often under capitalized and lack access to the business support and resources they need to scale. This is especially true at the seed stage.

Mercy Corps Ventures leverages the global resources and reach of a leading development agency to provide high-impact enterprises with investment capital, value-added support and catalytic partnerships so they can scale solutions for underserved populations in fragile, frontier markets. We are Mercy Corps’ impact investing division.

• We leverage Mercy Corps global resources staff, experts and over $500M per year in development projects incorporating market-driven solutions to give us a unique advantage.
• We make early-stage investments ranging from $50,000 — $500,000 in innovative startups operating in frontier fintech, agriculture, last-mile logistics, and the future of work.
• Post investment, our experts and Venture Growth team deliver value-added support to help ventures overcome critical barriers. Support areas include: finance systems, unit economic analysis, addressable market analysis, impact management, and fundraising.
• We use our global networks and influence to forge catalytic partnerships with ventures to hone their models, reach new customer segments, tailor and accelerate their growth.

Mercy Corps believes that impact investing presents a compelling opportunity to achieve increased scale, innovation, sustainability, and partnerships in international development. We are a founding member of the INGO Impact Investing Network, a group of more than 50 international NGOs working to deploy investment capital as an additional tool to solve pressing global development challenges.