Prime Coalition’s Expanded Platform (Pilot)
“Catalytic capital is investment that accepts disproportionate risk and/or concessionary returns to generate positive impact and enable third-party investment that wouldn't otherwise occur.”
- “Catalytic Capital,” Tideline, 2019
Explore Prime’s glossary to learn more about catalytic capital and find additional resources.
Catalytic investing with charitable capital holds immense potential to address our global climate emergency at scale and with speed.
Yet, structural challenges for philanthropists and investment managers alike are preventing its deployment. Nonprofit intermediation can meaningfully lower barriers on both sides, unblocking the deployment of charitable capital into critical, market-driven climate solutions.
Since 2015, Prime has closed $90.8MM of catalytic capital through its nonprofit form, mobilized $312MM into investment opportunities, and unlocked over $1.4B in external funding for Prime holdings.
Starting in 2025, we’re expanding to partner with impact-first investment managers to support catalytic vehicles built outside of Prime. Our nonprofit team anchors this program expansion in our deep philanthropy expertise, evidence-based impact discipline, and experimental risk tolerance, as well as our core values of tenacity, humility, and care.
Prime’s Pilot-Phase Solution
Prime has extensive experience co-creating Prime-Built catalytic investing programs in response to acute and unmet capital gaps in climate finance. Through our new pilot program, we are expanding our platform to include Prime-Facilitated catalytic investment opportunities that meet our Eligibility Criteria and provide philanthropists with an easy path to support those opportunities via Prime as a nonprofit intermediary.
As with all of Prime’s catalytic investing programs, we aggregate charitable capital from various sources (donor advised funds, private foundations, family offices, corporate giving programs, and more) and use aggregated capital commitments to make investments into qualified catalytic investment vehicles. Prime is on track toward our goal to approve 10 investment opportunities for our pilot platform by December 31, 2025. In the future, we plan to expand the program to include Prime-Curated catalytic investment opportunities that are sourced by Prime to achieve our impact priorities based on in-house systems research addressing the highest and best uses of catalytic capital.
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Prime has developed a set of Eligibility Criteria to guide our investment decision-making during the pilot phase and ensure that all of Prime’s catalytic investments are aligned with our charitable purpose and mission. Every Prime-Facilitated opportunity must satisfy four key criteria demonstrating that it will drive meaningful impact and leverage charitable capital to address critical capital gaps, exhibit strong processes for impact governance and risk, and be supported by a highly capable manager. We also screen for each opportunity's alignment with Prime’s operational needs, such that we can leverage outcomes from our early partnerships in the development of a full-scale program. Prime uses these Eligibility Criteria to manage a pipeline of Prime-Facilitated opportunities, based on inbound fund referrals from philanthropists.
Download our Eligibility Criteria table to learn more (page 2).
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How do we ensure all investments align with our charitable purpose and mission? Prime partners with investment managers in a collaborative diligence process that centers on the impact-first mission and governance of the opportunity. Prime’s Fund Advisory Committee, a sub-committee of Prime’s nonprofit board, must then vote to approve that each opportunity meets the minimum standard required for qualified recipients.
Upon approval, Prime will coordinate with the manager and with interested philanthropists to aggregate catalytic capital commitments for the opportunity. At the manager’s request, Prime also offers training on topics like catalytic capital fundraising, impact-prioritizing governance, and impact-prioritizing fund formation.
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Prime’s solution will lower barriers for philanthropists to support Prime-Facilitated catalytic investment opportunities.
Download our Philanthropists’ Options to Participate table to learn more (page 3).A one-time 3% core support fee is added to the philanthropist’s grant/commitment amount. This fee supports Prime’s nonprofit infrastructure, including the assessment and approval of opportunities, impact reporting for the length of the catalytic investment, and financial accounting and compliance. The core support fee is not recoverable. The full grant/commitment disbursement is made to Prime at the time of the pledge.
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As Prime is also piloting client-facing climate impact advisory services, we can provide supplementary support to managers through an additional service fee. Optional services include assessments of greenhouse gas impact potential, impact tracking, and reporting. Philanthropists making catalytic capital commitments may also make donations to Prime to provide impact reporting services.
Interested in Prime’s expanded platform?
Email Claudia Leon, Assistant Director, Impact, at claudia.leon@primecoalition.org to learn more.
