Yes, impact funds are "inefficient."

By every rule of fund management, you screen these deals out.

But the 13-cent gap is the price of the work nobody else will do.

Field visits. Regulatory pathways. Months of coaching a founder through a market that doesn’t buy the way they anticipated.

Traditional finance doesn’t do that work cheaper. It usually doesn’t do it at all.

Impact funds pay for what the market leaves out.

And the deals that math screens out?

$1M went into Jibu Inc. It’s now a safe-water network across 11,000 outlets in 8 countries. A 47x return on the original check.

$5M into Husk Power became 400 minigrids across two continents. 18x.

$900K turned Clínicas del Azúcar into 50+ diabetes clinics. 7x.

None of these were obvious deals. All of them got built.

Because we keep returning to the same relationships across markets, so a new founder doesn’t start cold. They inherit trust that’s already been built by us.

So this work doesn’t disappear when investors pass on it.

Someone pays for it, or the company never makes it to the market.

Worth knowing who’s paying for yours.

The cost figures and examples here come from a report by Brigit Helms and the team at the Miller Center for Global Impact.