Visa Foundation Equitable Access Initiative
How is JEDI defined?
Primary focus is on gender and racial justice, with openness to incorporating other diversity factors over time.
The JEDI lens is applied across the investment value chain from the ownership/management/governance of fund managers, through to the small businesses the fund invests in and the end customers reached by those businesses.
Strategy specifics and underlying goals
The goal is to increase capital allocation to diverse fund managers, who in turn invest in diverse entrepreneurs. The Foundation approach this in two ways:
Invest directly in first-time and diverse fund managers
Use their capital to influence a shift within larger funds that may not be very diverse. They are committed to creating a delta change in their organisational diversity (e.g., by bringing in female partner/s, applying a gender lens to their investment strategy and collecting gender-disaggregated data)
How is the JEDI approach being implemented now?
In building their strategy, Visa Foundation consulted various experts across the social justice and investment domains. They avoided re-inventing the wheel wherever possible. For example, they use the 2X criteria as a minimum threshold, and applied some of the same thresholds to racial justice focused investments in the US (e.g., women and minority founders or >50% ownerships or >25% representation in firm’s senior leadership).
The approach cuts across all stages of the investment process (selection, due diligence, agreements etc).
Currently they use side letters to embed commitments related to impact and diversity, and are open to using other tools over time.
While still early in this journey, Visa Foundation aims to work with and learn from others to help mainstream this approach across the field.
They plan to collect impact data across investments on gender diversity at the fund level, racial diversity (for US funds), the number of diverse businesses supported, and performance of those businesses over time (e.g. jobs, revenue)
Snapshot
Name: Visa Foundation, Equitable Access Initiative (launched April 2020)
Focus: Five-year strategic commitment to support gender diverse and inclusive small & micro businesses
Size: $200 million, with $60 million in grants and $140 million in impact investments
Location: Global investment focus
“As grant makers in advancing inclusive development, we must work together to ensure that we’re funding initiatives that help dismantle systemic barriers”