Ventures

THE CHALLENGE

Creating strategic business ventures is crucial to our mission.

In most communities, nonprofits, private and public partners have already cracked the code on how to support our neighbors in need but often struggle to raise the capital required to scale their solutions. Constant philanthropic fundraising is challenging, and traditional private capital options don’t always provide the flexibility and safety nets needed for these organizations.

Even successful fundraisers rarely garner enough funding to support their work at a community or regional level. This is particularly true in the Cape Fear Region, where our $1,300 501c3 revenue per capita pales in comparison to Buncombe County’s $7,600 per capita and Forsyth County’s $19,000 per capita.

To compound this issue, citizens in marginalized communities that nonprofits are trying to support often lack equitable access to capital markets, and predatory lending results in high-interest rates and poor outcomes. This inhibits our neighbor’s ability to build businesses, receive job training and education, and purchase homes and property that build generational wealth. Supporting people on the road to economic opportunity requires a locally driven approach built on a deep contextual understanding of both the neighborhood and the neighbor, placing the human experience at the center of financial inclusion.

OUR Investment Model

Cape Fear Collective has created a new platform for the industry in its scalability and nonprofit nature.

Called Collective Ventures, the platform is centered at the heart of the community we aim to empower. Our hyper-local data-driven approach illuminates effective programs, partners, and solutions, setting a clear path to optimal social impact. We provide resources to the nonprofit organizations making the community’s greatest change to break down these systemic barriers to success for its citizens with a dual goal for all: financial return on investment and social return on investment (SROI).

We deploy capital at the community level through a two-fold approach. First, we serve as an intermediary to large, national investment funds, corporations, and financial institutions that lean on us to be the local experts. Second, we nurture this locally-grown platform to attract funding at the local level, affording opportunities to qualified investors in their own backyard. To direct funds to these two business segments, we host a private capital investment structure and a nonprofit investment fund, a balanced and sustainable approach that allows us to fund a range of businesses and programs.

The entire platform is powered by Cape Fear Collective’s cutting-edge focus on data science and project management, which allow us to track progress, opportunity, and priority shifts in real-time to ensure the greatest SROI for our partners.

Where We Invest