Understanding the True Potential of Hybrid Financing Strategies for Social Entrepreneurs

Over the past thirty years, a number of social entrepreneurs have managed to create fairly large social enterprises. Properly run and scaled, they can generate sufficient cash flow to support debt financing at manageable levels of risk and, depending on their business model and legal form, also equity and mezzanine financing. However, while the social sector is large and growing, it continues to be highly fragmented – for social entrepreneurs and more classical non-profits alike. This holds back investment by raising costs and complexity and renders expansion more difficult. Non-profit and philanthropic leaders across a broad front have now incorporated the social entrepreneurship label into their work. Notwithstanding, a key question remains: How to fund social entrepreneurs efficiently?There is great enthusiasm for impact investing and social finance, as evidenced by numerous market entrants and large market estimates of up to one trillion US dollars in impact investing potential unfolding over the 2010s. However, this compares to a practical difficulty of sourcing enough quality transactions to render a large number of social investment vehicles viable on a non-subsidy basis. Additional steps are needed to translate market potential into actual investments. This will require greater market transparency, cooperation, efficient and scalable subsidy plus investment funding mechanisms and regulatory change.To tackle these issues and get a practical sense of the true potential of hybrid financing strategies for social entrepreneurs, this new Impact Economy Working Paper develops an evidence-based framework, derived from the empirical analysis of the financing approach of a number of widely recognized social entrepreneurs. We argue that the potential is significant but varies according to the subset of social entrepreneurs. Moreover, social entrepreneurs in general are well advised to derive the appropriate financing strategies for the expansion of their ventures from the first principles inherent in their business models rather than market enthusiasm. The true potential of hybrid financing strategies is significant. To fulfill the great expectations raised in the impact investing community, we need to pay close attention to the proper calibration of financing tools