Radiate Works Leads Efforts to Explore Collaborative Funding Models for NC

By Elizabeth Benefield and Melissa Carrier

September 2024

At Radiate Works we take our role as change leaders seriously.

We listen first, and deeply.

Over the past four months in partnership with Eshelman Innovation, the team at Radiate Works conducted listening sessions with over 65 philanthropic, corporate and institutional funding leaders in our state. Representing deep diversity of sector, industry and geography, participants voiced a loud and clear message: there is collective discomfort with the status quo. Due to a myriad of structural and other barriers, North Carolina leaders are not reaching their full impact potential to design and scale solutions that end persistent problems of access to healthcare, affordable housing, food insecurity and poverty.

We study barriers and headwinds.

Even as our state has deep philanthropic traditions and an emerging impact investing community, challenges exist to deploying funds that create maximum and scalable impact. Lack of early-stage risk capital coupled with risk aversion, competing incentives and other structural barriers that inhibit collaboration across sectors, and a desire for – but inability to achieve – a statewide vision and strategy are just a few. Consistently, funding leaders articulated that new thinking is needed as fragmented and inefficient efforts persist.

We bring focus and intention to exploring new possibilities.

There is good news! Without exception, we heard repeatedly an expressed intent and willingness to address these challenges with new structures and partnerships. Positive market incentives are also encouraging change. As an increasing number of venture capitalist and private foundations experiment with impact investing models, and high net worth investors seek mission-based funds, opportunities are growing. Returns are increasingly comparable to or exceed market-rate. Metric tools are emerging that measure and message impact across funding strategies. And collective impact models in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Asia have produced notable outcomes and potential for greater cost efficiencies and more equitable capital flow. Importantly, North Carolina’s innovation landscape is increasingly characterized by initiatives that weave together traditional grantmaking, state and federal funds, and private capital investment strategies.

We practice optimism and courage.

With decades of experience working across public and private sectors in the impact innovation space, the team at Radiate Works is positioned to tackle the bold and aspirational goal of developing a statewide organizing strategy. We are confident in our capacity to craft and deploy a new set of tools and practices that encourage collective action and move the needle on impact. Along with Eshelman Innovation, new partners, Acumen America, Cannon Foundation, and NC Rural Center, have joined the cause, ready to journey with us through more discovery and design work over the next several months, seeking ultimately to identify and test a slate of potential solutions. We are just getting started and there is room at the table. Join us?