What gives SharedImpact its power?

Here at SharedImpact, we’ve built up an outstanding track record of creating an impact in the philanthropic world over the past five years, as the graphic shows below. What has enabled us to do so?

First and foremost, of course, is our outstanding management team which works day and night to help SharedImpact create the largest change we can. We also have a stable of best-in-class auditors, legal advisors, and bankers working behind the scene, of course.

But what about the actual structure? What gives SharedImpact such an advantage over other financial intermediaries operating in the space?

The power of SharedImpact lies in its global legal structure. This consists of an interlinked network of charitable vehicles in three jurisdictions: a 501c(3) public charity in the United States and registered charities in the United Kingdom and Hong Kong. The tax authorities in each jurisdiction not only recognize the charitable status of each of the SharedImpact entities, but also recognize that these charitable vehicles are interlinked for tax purposes. This means that multiple tax benefits can be claimed by certain donors with multi-jurisdictional tax obligations, thereby enabling sophisticated tax planning to occur.

Furthermore, SharedImpact has a powerful advantage over other financial intermediaries. By virtue of the fact that SharedImpact solely manages philanthropic capital (i.e. all the money flowing into SharedImpact is donated, and so SharedImpact actually owns all the money it manages), SharedImpact is not subject to the same financial regulations as a bank or investment fund. So, for example, SharedImpact is not subject to the financial promotions regime or US regulations such as FATCA.

The reason for this is that SharedImpact has legal title to the money it manages. When someone “opens an account” with SharedImpact, they are in fact donating that money to SharedImpact (albeit with an implicit understanding that SharedImpact will only deploy that money under the advice of the account-holder). From a regulatory and legal viewpoint, therefore, SharedImpact is not considered to be a deposit-taking institution or making financial promotions, but is in fact just one institutional investor “dealing in its own money”. This is the fundamental advantage that SharedImpact holds over all other regulated financial institutions.

In practice, this means that SharedImpact can legally do things that are simply not permitted under the usual financial regulations. This is a powerful capability that has been expressly approved by the various tax and regulatory authorities in the jurisdictions in which we operate. This is a very specialist tax niche that only SharedImpact is currently capable of exploiting.