Zero Gap Fund Update

Climate change, food insecurity, inequality, energy poverty, the threat of pandemics:

these are the defining challenges of our time; challenges that require significantly more resources than philanthropy and government alone can provide.

Launched in partnership with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and its flagship Catalytic Capital Consortium (C3), the Zero Gap Fund is a vehicle to channel private investment toward
addressing the world’s most pressing challenges. C3 is a pioneering investment, learning, and market development initiative bringing together leading impact investors to encourage greater impact and use of catalytic capital globally.

The Fund’s mandate is focused on financial innovation—on showing how new investment solutions and products can overcome traditional market barriers to channel critical financing to impact-driven investments.

Through the targeted deployment of patient, risktolerant, and/or flexible capital—what we call catalytic capital—the Zero Gap Fund is focused on supporting new investment products and mechanisms marrying deep impact with the potential for replication and growth. While taking a disciplined investment approach, the Fund’s mandate looks to support first-of-a-kind solutions and teams aimed at mobilizing private capital for significant impact at scale.

The Fund’s diverse and global portfolio includes a new debt instrument for forest restoration in California, a listed bond targeting women-owned businesses across Southeast Asia, a blended private equity fund focused on climate adaptation in the Global South, a pioneering impact fund focused on low-income consumers in emerging markets leveraging insurance and an innovative student loan platform targeting lowincome students with high-potential in the U.S. The early impact from these investments is beginning to materialize: 717 acres of reforestation; 23 million lowincome and underserved consumers reached; 327 loans to low-income students—in just the first 18 months of the Fund’s life.

The launch the Zero Gap Fund builds off The Rockefeller Foundation’s long history of pioneering new ways to magnify the impact of private capital and spur innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing problems. The true measure of our success will come through the lasting on-the-ground improvements to vulnerable communities and ecosystems—day to day, year to year— stemming from our investments. As such, this impact report speaks to the driving motivation behind our work. I hope it will also serve as an inspiration and invitation for like-minded investors and partners to join us in shaping the path ahead.

Maria Kozloski
Senior Vice President, Innovative Finance
The Rockefeller Foundation