Tracey Turner: A Donor's Playbook for Impact Investing in East Africa

Tracey Turner has spent three decades proving that the best answer to poverty is often a business. She started at Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, founded MicroPlace, one of the first online platforms that let everyday Americans invest in microfinance (later acquired by eBay), and founded Copia, which turned 52,000 small shopkeepers across Kenya into e-commerce entrepreneurs and hubs for their communities simultaneously increasing their financial earnings 2-3x.

Today she is early to an exciting new way to use philanthropy. She has CataCap invest a meaningful share of her giving in early-stage companies in East Africa, in the cause she cares about most: lifting people out of poverty. When those investments return capital, it returns to the charitable assets held by CataCap and is credited to her charitable account to recommend again, multiplying the impact of every dollar she gives.

This conversation is a field guide for anyone with a donor-advised fund, a foundation or an annual giving budget who wants their money to do more. Tracey takes us to a roadside shop in rural Kenya where a woman named Teresia doubled her income and sent her kids to school, and to a hillside near Mombasa where six women farmers may become the country's first coastal cocoa growers. She explains what she looks for in a founder, why she goes to see every business in person, and why the fact that less than 1% of global venture capital reaches Africa is the opportunity, not the obstacle.

In this episode:

• Why Tracey thinks of her philanthropy as capital, and how the returns get recycled into the next investment • The criteria she uses to back an entrepreneur • What she learns on the ground that never shows up in a pitch deck • How a DAF can fund for-profit social enterprises, and what to check in the fine print

If you give generously and have ever wondered whether your philanthropy could work harder, this is the episode to start with.

Companies mentioned: 10X Nutrition, Nuru Solutions, Copia, MicroPlace.

Nuru Solutions and 10X Nutrition were both funded by CataCap donor-investors and are now fully subscribed. More investments in East Africa from Tracey are on the way. Create a free CataCap account to hear about them first. See current investment opportunities

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