The Menzies Foundation is delighted to announce a new collaboration between Trust Waikato (New Zealand), and Criterion Institute to explore blended capital models to support indigenous women’s enterprising and entrepreneurship.
Supporting our work within the Indigenous Women Entrepreneur space and the Maganda Makers Business Club, this research will build a collaborative design process to identify new vehicles which provide sustainable financing to indigenous women entrepreneurs in rural and remote Australia.
Working with diverse partners across sectors and geographies, Criterion has developed a framework for analysing power in investments. The framework supports investors in understanding how to disrupt harmful power dynamics in their investment design and decision-making processes to achieve more transformative impact.
With support from Menzies Foundation and Trust Waikato, Criterion Institute proposes to scope the state of the field for blended capital models and analyse their potential ability to support indigenous women in nascent enterprises, while documenting the opportunities, questions, and challenges about what more could be done to provide appropriate and transformative capital to these enterprises. Criterion’s research will include an exploration of developing models that sit at the intersection of impact bonds, shared value practice, and impact investment vehicles.
The research will culminate in a Report that includes recommendations regarding ways that a blended finance approach can specifically advance gender equality and support indigenous women to build enterprises that support themselves, their families, and the community.
