15 years of Sefa: A reflection with Renee Martin

Reflections on the role of grit and determination when you are doing work for which there is limited precedent:

As we approach Sefa’s 15-year milestone, it feels timely to pause and reflect on the journey so far. 

That pause does not always come naturally to us. At Sefa, our instinct is to do, to keep moving, and to move at pace. But milestones matter. They create space to acknowledge where we have come from, honour the work that came before us, and draw out the lessons we now carry because of 15 years of effort, grit and determination. 

So, what has Sefa’s story been over the past 15 years? 

We started with capital. A $10 million grant from the Federal Government in 2011 gave us the impetus to begin. From the outset, we secured matched debt and equity investment, which was a condition of that grant. At the time, impact investing in Australia was still nascent, so we continue to acknowledge those early believers who backed something before the path was clear. 

In the early years, deploying that capital was hard work. There were a few reasons for this. There was limited investable pipeline, and many for-purpose organisations had low awareness of debt as a tool for growth. We were also still shaping our own lending approach. Looking back, our early credit lens, with its focus on security and capital preservation, constrained what we could allocate and where. 

Even so, we supported some deeply transformative organisations in those early years, including Nightingale Housing, MiHaven and Shopfront Arts Co-op. 

By 2019, it was clear that if we were to do what we now advise our clients to do, and organise ourselves to optimise impact in a commercially sustainable way, we needed to test whether capability building should become part of Sefa’s offering. 

Renee Martin joined Sefa in early 2020 to build that capability offering. It is fair to say it was an experiment, for Renee, for Sefa, for our sector, and for the world as we all grappled with COVID. 

In those early days, we had the brilliant opportunity to speak with our existing lending clients and understand the support they would value. From those conversations, we identified a need for capability building across four areas: impact strategy, financial acumen and commercial models, governance, and operational and growth planning. These areas felt relevant regardless of an organisation’s size, maturity or legal structure. 

We were fortunate to receive a significant grant from the NSW Government through the Social Sector Transformation Fund, which enabled us to deliver this support to social services and health organisations across NSW. That meant building a team, getting out into the field, and learning by standing alongside clients as they worked to sustain services through extraordinary uncertainty. It was deeply meaningful work. 

That contract gave Sefa the opportunity to refine our offering. The next major opportunity came through the Paul Ramsay Foundation’s Growth Incubator program, where we supported six well-established social enterprises through sprints, coaching and access to subject matter experts. Each enterprise had its own needs, so our support was bespoke. But it was also shaped by our growing understanding of how to scaffold impact businesses and prepare them to attract and absorb investment, regardless of the form that capital might take. 

This evolution continued through the opportunity provided by NSW Treasury to design and deliver the EmpowerHer program. This work was deeply intentional. It supported both early-stage, regionally based enterprises and established organisations working to improve outcomes for women experiencing disadvantage. 

We worked across two communities, the Northern Rivers and Riverina Murray, collaborating closely with local partners to support the development of early-stage enterprises. We learned an enormous amount about working in place, building partnerships grounded in mutuality, and taking time to convene in ways that genuinely work for community. 

That work inspired us so deeply that it underpinned Sefa’s organisation-wide commitment to gender equity. We were proud to showcase our EmpowerHer clients and launch our gender statement at International Women’s Day in 2025. 

Alongside these larger projects, we continued to deliver targeted capability engagements with philanthropic and institutional support. We also built our research credentials, particularly in affordable housing, with a specific focus on women as a cohort whose needs require deeper attention. 

At the same time, we continued lending to highly impactful clients. We saw our portfolio shift from being weighted towards property security to including more unsecured, working capital and growth loans. Today, only 20% of our loan book in property-backed. As a national provider of flexible finance, with the ability to lend across impact areas and legal structures, it is important that our lending responds to the needs of the market. We are proud that we have been able to adapt, and to convene like-minded investors to see the opportunity and value in shifting investment profiles. 

All of this work gave us confidence that there was a genuine need for both capability building and flexible finance in the impact ecosystem. Our hypothesis was that there was a gap in the market for an integrated capital and capability offering, especially for those early growth stage organisations that we’d be unable to service in the past. That’s why we were thrilled to partner with Hand Heart Pocket to establish Backing the Bold, initially in Queensland. 

Through Backing the Bold, we have standardised our approach to capability building. The initial four pillars have evolved into our Foundations for Funding Framework, which now has six elements. Our unique lens as investors, with a 15-year track record, allows us to deliver capability uplift with a very focused intent: we want clients to come through the program ready to be investable. 

Eighteen months into Backing the Bold, we are seeing increasing applications and have already committed more than $450,000 in capital to three organisations that have gone through the capability building program. With additional philanthropic support, we are thrilled to now extend the opportunity nationally. 

Sefa has changed a lot in the past six years. We have grown from a team of four to a team of 18, with offices in Sydney and Brisbane. We have expanded our relationships across the ecosystem, including with government, the private sector, philanthropy and community partners. 

We are flying the flag for impact stacks, building our reputation as creative conveners of fit-for-purpose finance for impact-led organisations. We are continuing to learn from and with our clients, who are doing some of Australia’s most important work and solving complex social challenges in sustainable ways. 

We are proud of the work to date. And we are unbelievably excited about the next horizon, and the bold ambitions that will carry us there.