NextBillion - A WDI Publication

Over the last few months, there have been call-outs and critiques of impact investing, often arguing that it is just commercial investing at heart, seeking market rate returns at the expense of entrepreneurs and their stakeholders. At the same time, there is growing interest in “impact-first” investing models, which aim to support entrepreneurs with not only capital, but also with leadership, governance and technical support.

Yet these critiques and new approaches typically come from impact investors and intermediaries themselves, not from entrepreneurs — who still often lack the ability to provide feedback on common investor practices, even when the downsides of those behaviors are widely acknowledged across the sector.

As a result, founders of mission-driven companies have no choice but to live with the consequences of how impact investing is practiced today. Founders pitch to investors, answer due diligence requests, and then wait. They wait for decisions and, if the decision is positive, they wait for the disbursement. After the disbursement they manage investor communications and reporting, often navigating the complexities of multiple impact measurement and management indicators, data collection methodologies and data collation platforms. They may or may not receive the necessary non-investment support they need from their investors, including access to networks.

Founders in Focus: The State of Impact Capital, a research initiative by Acumen and the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan (WDI), aims to change this dynamic and shift power towards entrepreneurs and companies.

The research collects data via a survey that centers the experiences of founders and C-suite executives across Africa, Asia and Latin America who have raised capital in 2024-2025. WDI and Acumen built this survey from conversations with founders and investors and a brief yet focused literature review. Every question targets real pain points that entrepreneurs — and pioneering impact investors familiar with their challenges — shared with us during our survey design phase, including issues like timeliness, communication, network access, and the burdens of due diligence and impact reporting. Founders in Focus also invites entrepreneurs to rate their investors on these key operational practices and identify gaps in non-investment support.

This research is unique, in that it aims to flip the script on the typical investor/entrepreneur feedback loop. Instead of focusing on what entrepreneurs need to do differently to attract investment, it gives founders the opportunity to capture their experiences with investors — both the good and the bad — in a structured manner that can generate rigorous and independent evidence and inform actual change in the investing ecosystem. Unlike internal investor feedback forms that can lead to biased results and that are typically limited to an individual investor’s portfolio, this multi-sector and multi-geography survey is run independently by WDI. We are a solutions-driven organization committed to maintaining rigorous methods, sharing our findings and connecting key stakeholders in the entrepreneurship ecosystem. We designed our survey to produce trustworthy, comparable data that aims to reveal gender-, geography-, and sector-level patterns. 

By pooling many entrepreneurs’ lived realities, we aim to move the conversation beyond isolated stories to highlight patterns that investors, enterprise support organizations and intermediaries can act on, including good practices they can replicate. 

So, if you’ve had a great investor, tell us why! But if you’re dealing with excessive data requests, harsh terms and complex reporting requirements, coupled with radio silence from the investor whenever you seek clarification or support, tell us that too. 

Founders, now is your chance to raise your voice and spark meaningful change. Instead of having yet another one-off, private conversation about the woes of raising impact capital, then hoping that change will come, take 20 minutes to add your views to this survey. WDI ensures that your survey responses will be anonymized and your confidentiality safeguarded from all investors, including Acumen. During analysis, we will aggregate your data with data from your peers, and we will only generate private, investor-specific “report cards” when three or more investees provide feedback on the same investor, which helps further ensure anonymity.

The survey is open through June 26. Add your feedback today, and stay tuned for more updates as we assess the resulting data: We’ll share insights from the survey (excluding the ratings received by individual investors) in the coming months.

🔗 English survey: https://umich.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_b7bGY7obe1HMWjk

🔗 Encuesta en Español: https://umich.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_cNK5EPdH1Yp6PlA

Yaquta Fatehi is a program manager with the Impact Measurement and Management team at the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan (NextBillion’s parent organization).

Photo credit: ThitareeSarmkasat