VfW Partners with G-SEARCh Impact Investors to Implement Gender-Smart Strategies with SMEs

The G-SEARCh consortium is an example of what good impact investor collaboration looks like. The group includes AlphaMundi, Acumen, AHL Venture Partners, Root Capital, SEAF, and the Shell Foundation, all working with enterprises to promote social impact and gender equality. The innovation approaches of these investors to gender-smart investing are highlighted in a newly-released report by the William Davidson Institute.

At Value for Women, we're excited about this report – and the broader collaboration effort behind it – as a platform for exchanging ideas and insights about how to action gender lens investing.

The report is a compendium of summaries that showcase each investor’s approach to providing gender-smart technical assistance to portfolio companies to improve business and social outcomes, including gender equality. It’s a quick and action-oriented read, and documents the steps in the process, as well as early lessons and insights.

Value for Women advises the consortium and works directly with several of the investors by providing tailored gender support to enterprises in emerging markets in the sectors of clean energy, food and agriculture, and MFIs and fintechs, among others. This approach includes the selection of enterprises to complete an in-depth gender and business diagnostic and development of a menu of options for gender and business strategies expected to lead to concrete business practice changes. VfW guides portfolio companies during the process of implementation of selected strategies and on impact measurement. VfW has been championing this approach since 2014, including one of the first iterations, developed in partnership with the Shell Foundation.

Download the report from G-SEARCh here, and learn more about the consortium here.

For more background on how to get started in gender lens investing, check out our recent report, How to Invest with a Gender Lens.