ABSTRACT
Missio Invest is the non-profit fund manager of Missio Invest Social Impact Fund (MISIF). MISIF is an impact investment fund designed and operated with the overall objective of expanding and strengthening the largest social enterprise network of farms, schools, health facilities, and financial institutions across Africa. These social enterprises are owned and operated by the various congregations, seminaries, parishes, and dioceses of the Catholic Church. In terms of scale and footprint, there are presently 550 dioceses in Africa with thousands of religious congregations owning and operating approximately 42,000 schools, 2,200 health facilities, and thousands of farms and agribusinesses. Further, these social enterprises are run by approximately 70,000 religious women and 65,00 religious men – forming the largest cohort of faith-based social entrepreneurs in Africa.
MISIF provides such social enterprises with long-term loans from 50,000 to 1MM USD and linked technical assistance and business advisory services. To date, these social enterprises run by Catholic Church entities have not had access to external financing nor technical and business advisory assistance to help them strengthen and grow their impact-first enterprises that provide key basic services to local populations across Africa. Through mid-2022, MISIF has issued 53 loans totaling approximately 10MM USD across 8 countries. Thus far, the loans are successful, with seven of the 51 loans now fully repaid and 98% performance among all loans issued in the last three years. Given that MISIF is an impactfirst investor, impact measurement of both the loans and linked technical assistance and the social impact provided by the borrowing enterprises is critical, yet also challenging to implement. This chapter will explore the approach and methods that Missio Invest has developed to measure and track the impact of Missio Invest’s lending operations as well as the social impact generated by MISIF’s faith-based borrowers.
