Acumen

Acumen is changing the way the world tackles poverty by investing in companies, leaders and ideas. We invest patient capital in businesses whose products and services are enabling the poor to transform their lives. Founded bin 2001, Acumen has invested more than $132 million in 136 companies across Africa, Latin America, South Asia and the United States. We are also developing a global community of emerging leaders with the knowledge, skills and determination to create a more inclusive world. In 2015, Acumen was named one of Fast Company’s Top 10 Most Innovative Not-for-Profit Companies. Learn more at www.acumen.org and on Twitter @Acumen.

Founder & CEO

Jacqueline Novogratz is the New York Times best-selling author of The Blue Sweater and Manifesto for a Moral Revolution. She founded Acumen in 2001 with the idea of investing philanthropic patient capital in entrepreneurs seeking to solve the toughest issues of poverty. As a pioneer of impact investing, Acumen and its investments have brought critical services like healthcare, education and clean energy to hundreds of millions of low-income people.

Jacqueline has been named one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy, one of the 25 Smartest People of the Decade by the Daily Beast, and one of the world’s 100 Greatest Living Business Minds by Forbes, which also honored her with the Forbes 400 Lifetime Achievement Award for Social Entrepreneurship. In addition to her work with Acumen, she is a sought-after speaker and sits on a number of philanthropic boards.

The future of philanthropy is being rewritten, and Acumen is seeking a seasoned Director of Philanthropy to meet this moment. Someone skilled at building deep relationships to mobilize transformational philanthropic capital and help build our next chapter.

Who are we looking for? A philanthropic leader who can cultivate meaningful relationships, bring new networks to engage with Acumen’s work and work alongside me and other senior leaders to inspire transformative giving. A trusted advisor and results-driven partner who will elevate Acumen’s visibility, deepen relationships with potential supporters, unlock unrestricted capital and contribute to our mission of solving problems of poverty at scale.

If this speaks to you or you know someone who fits this description, we want to encourage you or them to apply. We have huge things to accomplish in 2026, and this is a remarkable opportunity to be part of it.

Jacqueline Novogratz

Founder & CEO of Acumen. Author of "The Blue Sweater" and "Manifesto for a Moral Revolution." Builder for human dignity. Solving the tough problems of poverty.

Open article: Director of Philanthropy by job-boards.greenhouse.io

At a time when traditional aid is retreating just as crises are multiplying, I’m seeing a quiet but profound shift among donors and investors alike. Those who are still giving are doing so with greater intention, asking their capital to go further for people and planet.

Yet everywhere there’s a weariness about the role of philanthropy. And while there’s legitimacy to that, so has Acumen’s experience revealed extraordinary potential for the role of private resources to solve public problems. 

From the early days of off-grid solar, for example, what unlocked every stage of progress was patient, risk-tolerant philanthropic capital, and the sector has now impacted hundreds of millions of lives across Africa and South Asia. And Acumen's latest $250M Hardest-to-Reach fund to electrify 17 sub-Saharan nations is anchored by more than $80M in philanthropy, which was the risk-taking anchor that paved the way for institutional investment. 
 
In Fortune, I make this case and lay out why we need a new financial architecture that blends the moral clarity of philanthropy with the discipline and scale of markets, anchored in leaders solving problems from the ground up.

If we want lasting impact, especially in fragile contexts, this is what the next chapter of giving could look like: https://lnkd.in/eVPvu4z3

Jacqueline's Fortune piece

"Nothing we do is sustainable" is a bold way to begin a sustainability report, but what I admire in Patagonia's report is not perfection but the willingness to bring humility and rigor together, name where progress is falling short and invite others to join in doing better for people and planet.

They report that only 8% of their synthetic fabrics are currently made from secondary waste, far short of the 50% target they’ve set. They also provide a lender-style balance sheet showing how their ownership model (giving their profits to environmental causes) pushes them to stay anchored in mission, not only chasing scale and profit.

Despite progress on renewables, they report that a meaningful share of their supply-chain emissions continues to sit in factories they don’t directly control — a reminder of how complex systems change can be.

We should celebrate companies like Patagonia willing to lead with this kind of transparency and accountability, for it's an important step if we're to move together toward solutions that regenerate rather than extract and that put people and planet, not just profit, at the center.

We’re learning from this approach too. In Acumen’s Failing Forward report, we tried to share our own missteps and lessons with the hope that more organizations feel free to do the same, because transparent learning is how we accelerate real change.

Thank you for your moral courage, Ryan Gellert and team!

🔗 Patagonia's report: https://lnkd.in/eyxygz3v
🔗 Our Failing Forward report: https://lnkd.in/eaHAKgev

Creativity isn’t a word often associated with finance, but that’s exactly what’s needed in some of the hardest-to-reach markets Acumen operates in. 

In Malawi — where nearly 80% of people live in rural areas, one in four have access to electricity and the local currency lost half its value in recent years — we’ve needed to dig deep with outside-the-box solutions to provide the right kind of capital for entrepreneurs. Our Hardest-to-Reach Initiative invested $2 million in Yellow, led by the extraordinary Maya Stewart, which is bringing clean energy to families across rural Malawi. 

What made this investment different was its structure: a blended-currency loan combining U.S. dollars and Malawian kwacha. Currency depreciation and inconvertibility make it nearly impossible for entrepreneurs to service dollar-denominated debt — one sharp swing in exchange rates can undo years of progress. So, with support from TCX, KfW and the European Commission, we designed a loan indexed to the local currency and hedged at a reduced cost, creating breathing room for Yellow to grow sustainably without passing rising costs onto customers.

This kind of blended-currency financing is rare in fragile markets, yet it’s exactly the kind of financial innovation needed to unlock new energy markets, aligning financial sustainability with impact.

Yellow has already trained more than a thousand local agents to deliver solar home systems and smartphones to the last mile, allowing shops to stay open after dark, children to study at night and households to save money otherwise spent on kerosene.

This investment, made possible by philanthropy, represents the kind of creative, risk-taking capital the world needs more of. Working alongside partners like TCX, KfW and the European Commission, we’re proving that blended finance can unlock dignity and opportunity in even the most fragile markets. 

Jiwoo Choi, Sandra H., Rosalie Marsden, Michele Franchetti Pardo

This BBC StoryWorks video tells Maya and Yellow’s story: https://lnkd.in/eCdpQpXp

Open video: Humanising Energy: Improving livelihoods with energy access on youtube.com

Humanising Energy: Improving livelihoods with energy access

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