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Investment Roadmap PDF Document
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Directions: Investment Roadmap

Your Investment Roadmap prioritizes and plans how you will answer your most important business and impact questions over the next 18 months.  It builds upon the your results from the Business Growth and Impact Evidence Tools, and helps you plan how to use current and future capital to gain traction and prepare for that next investment.   Use this Roadmap as a tool in conversations with investors.

 

We’ve written several case studies of investment roadmaps and lessons learned, referenced in the following two reports:

Strengthening health systems in developing countries through private investment: Lessons from the Global Health Investment Landscaping Project (GHILP), co-authored by Calvert Foundation, Innovations in Healthcare, CASE at Duke, Duke SEAD, Investors’ Circle and USAID, January 2015. See pp. 32-34.

 

 

 

Toniic EGuide to Early-Stage Global Impact Investing, CASE at Duke and Toniic, 2012. See pp. 30-40.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sample graphics from the reports above include:

 

 

What do you think?

What did you think about the Investment Roadmap? Will it be useful to your venture?

Articulating Strategy to Investors: The 4 Impact Basics

Achieving investment is a journey. What should you pack in your suitcase to prepare?
There are 4 Impact Basics that impact entrepreneurs should have packed and ready to pull out in any conversation with an investor. Learn more about these 4 Basics with explanations and examples to prepare you for the next step in your journey.
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Articulating Strategy to Investors: Investor Impact Preferences

What types of impact evidence do your investors demand?
There is no need to spend precious resources gathering higher levels of evidence than your investors and stakeholders actually demand! Investors generally fall into 5 categories based on their impact evidence preferences. Find tips on how to identify them and understand their expectations. And see which of 3 impact evidence paths your stakeholders may lead you down.
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Impact Evidence Foundation Tool Excel Document
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Directions: Impact Evidence Foundation Tool

Start by “packing” your 4 Impact Basics with this tool.  Then use the 5 Impact Evidence Preference levels to categorize your current and future investors. The Summary tab alerts you to any additional effort you may need to put toward meet your investors’ preferences.  Build this effort into your Investment Roadmap on the next page.

Additional Resources

There are four additional resources below that may support your thinking about impact evidence. The Investor Impact Evidence Preferences Graphic is an easy way to see how different types of investors fall across the five impact evidence categories. The DGHI Toolkits can help you design ways to evaluate your work and communicate results in efficient ways. (The toolkits are specifically geared towards healthcare, but most of the ideas can be applied to other industries.) Jacaranda Health's 2016 Impact Report is a good example of how a social enterprise communicates about impact to stakeholders. The Mercy Corps Social Venture Fund Annual Report gives an example of how impact data on portfolio companies can be rolled up into a fund report - remember that the information a fund plans to report to its stakeholders has implications for what it expects portfolio companies to collect.

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Did the impact evidence content resonate with you? Please share your feedback to help us continue to improve.

Articulating Strategy to Investors: Critical Growth Elements

What are the critical elements that underpin your business’s growth?
There are seven critical business growth elements that investors will ask you about. They will expect you to clearly articulate what you already know, what you don’t know, and what you need money to learn across these elements. Learn about them here, and then assess your business on each of them using the Business Growth Diagnostic.
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Business Growth Diagnostic Excel Document
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Directions: Business Growth Diagnostic
Download the Business Growth Diagnostic to assess your venture’s confidence on each of the 7 critical business growth elements. The Results tab shows your overall score and strengths and weaknesses; it also provides interpretations and suggested next steps to improve your score. Complete the Diagnostic yourself, or have each member of your management team complete a copy and come together to compare results. The Diagnostic is formatted in Excel, so you can save your results and reflect back on your progress as your venture continues to develop.

Articulating Strategy to Investors: Growth Strategy Hacks

How can you turn your Diagnostic into a roadmap for your investors?
Create a detailed rationale for investment with our 3 hacks (or shortcuts) using your Diagnostic results. Hack #1 helps investors understand your business's stage of development. Hack #2 relates that stage to the type of capital you need. And Hack #3 is recognizing, and making it through, the Pioneer Gap.
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Additional Resources

Going Deeper on Unit Models: What is a unit model and why investors care so much about it? Download this resource to understand the many ways to think about unit model.

Metrics Dashboard Example: View a simple way you can communicate your business growth progress to investors.

Husk Power System Case Study: Read a real world example of a business moving through the Blueprint to Scale stages of development, and finding capital appropriate to each stage.

Social Enterprise Legal Structures Tool: What legal structure is best for your venture’s growth and impact? Use this online resource to decide which legal structure best suits your needs.

VIRAL (Venture Investment-Readiness and Awareness Levels) Pathway (Village Capital): Diagnostic tool and communications framework for equity investment readiness.

Across the Returns Continuum (Omidyar Network): What kind of returns does your enterprise seek? This scheme, on page 10, introduces a returns typology used by some funders.

What do you think?

Please share your feedback on the Business Growth content. What did you think about the Diagnostic, and how do you see yourself using this information?

Articulating Strategy to Investors: Two Key Dimensions

What do investors expect from impact entrepreneurs?

Impact entrepreneurs must clearly articulate where their ventures are on two dimensions: business growth and impact evidence. This effort requires mastery of two different sets of tools, vocabulary, and techniques. Module 2 walks you through this process with a series of diagnostics leading to an investment roadmap.
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Additional Resource: Perspective from the Field

Paul Sansone, partner at TechCXO and former CFO of Boys and Girls Club of America and Better World Books, has decades of experience in financing social ventures. Hear his perspective on what impact investors are looking for in their investments, raising capital as a B Corp, and trends he sees in social entrepreneurship.

Impact Capital 101: Finding Aligned Capital

How do you find your way in this impact capital market?

Impact capital is not generic. There are specific constraints attached to each dollar, which combine to create different "flavors" of impact capital. As an impact entrepreneur, you should identify the flavor of capital that aligns with your enterprise so you can narrow your investment targets. This allows you to be more efficient in how you spend precious capital-raising time and resources.
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Additional Resource

The Investor Worldview shows how investment managers think strategically about the flavors of capital they issue in order to diversify their portfolios and meet the needs of their clients. As an entrepreneur seeking to raise capital from an investor, it is important to understand the way the other side views the market.

What do you think?

Please share your feedback on Module 1. Was the information useful to help you begin to understand and navigate the impact capital market?

Impact Capital 101: Market Size

How much capital exists in the market?

The impact capital market is growing, and the trends are very positive for you as an impact entrepreneur. See how much capital currently exists in the impact capital market, and how that compares to the traditional capital market.
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Intro to Impact Capital: Supply and Demand

What can a butterfly tell us about the impact capital market?

The butterfly shape and form illustrates how the supply and demand sides of the impact capital market interact. Capital never changes hands between parties until there is agreement on risk, return, and impact; the butterfly breaks down the process for you. Module 1 equips you with an understanding of the terms of engagement as you embark upon your capital-raising journey.
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