Sefa’s next horizon: towards a bolder and brighter sector

With 20 years’ combined experience in the sector, we at Sefa and Sefa Partnerships are ready for a bold new chapter. Want to know what’s ahead? Read on.

If there’s anything the last decade or so has taught us, it’s that our role in the social impact investment sector is about so much more than financing. It’s about building organisations’ capability, helping them grow and expand their impact. It’s also about sharing insights and advice and guiding corporates, government and philanthropy to provide the right mechanisms to support the sector.

Looking ahead, we want to continue to be bold. To shake things up, blaze trails for others to follow and offer useful thought leadership and advice based on our experiences. Equally important is the need to balance this with staying true to and grateful for our origins and holding them with pride.

We’re here for the broader good. We’re proud to be an Aboriginal controlled and governed social enterprise, after the NSW Aboriginal Land Council became our majority shareholder. And while Indigenous investment is high priority, we invest broadly in the entire Australian community and work with diverse beliefs, backgrounds and impact areas.

These elements provide the foundation for everything we do and will continue to guide us well into the future as we strive to reach our new goals.

A sharp focus on direct impact

Over the coming months, we will be working on stretching ourselves and refocusing – doing the work ‘on the business’ we normally do for our clients. We will develop our impact narrative by updating our theory of change, and creating a measurement framework that will help us better quantify our direct impact through capital and capability. We will also bring our priorities around gender and Indigenous impact into the fold. Our statement of intent on gender will cover our internal perspective and guide our work across investing and advisory work. And our roadmap for Indigenous impact, currently in development, will help us continue to expand our footprint in these areas – in FY2022 almost half of our clients were women-led and more than 25% were Indigenous.

Owning the growth capital space

In 2022 we made our first growth capital investment, helping purpose-driven technology platform Covidence scale its operations and impact. We have allocated a further $2million for growth capital in our balance sheet for FY2024 and beyond, with half the funds dedicated to Indigenous outcomes.

But this is just the start.

Our goal is to own the growth capital space. So we’ve bolstered our Investment Committee with external advisors to help grow our knowledge and subject matter expertise and set up the right processes.

Cracking catalytic capital

At Sefa Partnerships, we will be sharper and more intentional about growing the business and refocusing our priorities as we continue tackling structural disadvantage. We wanted to build a bridge between philanthropy and mainstream finance, but we realised that Sefa didn’t have quite the reach to achieve this. That’s why we will reactivate Sefa Partnerships’ origins as a Deductible Gift Recipient and Public Benevolent Institution. In 2024, we will start capital raising and fundraising into Sefa Partnerships and reaching out to impact investors and partners to create an additional funding pool for catalytic capital. This will be the final piece in plugging the gap in the bridge.

Building capability and partnerships

Over the past decade, we've proven we can do what we set out to do. Now it’s time to shift the dial and show others the way – to be loud and bold and truly step into a leadership role within the sector.

Our work walking alongside organisations and running programs such as EmpowerHER and the Paul Ramsay Foundation Social Impact Growth Incubator has given us a wealth of insights. Sharing and translating these will help us continue to advise, influence and shape the sector – and create more mechanisms for upskilling, growing and uplifting social enterprises.

We’ve seen the impact our work can have on not only individual social enterprises, but also in creating new opportunities within the sector. One philanthropic foundation told us they developed a new grant program directly as a result of working with us to help a grassroots organisation establish a viable social enterprise. The unique grants offer organisations $25,000-$75,000 to help them explore opportunities or overcome challenges.

Always moving forward

The world refuses to stand still. So we keep moving forward, exploring new ideas and creating new solutions, relentlessly focusing on investing in impact. We will continue with business-as-usual while sharpening our focus and being more intentional about our approach. Whether that’s doing growth capital well or being bold with how we influence key players in the social impact investment space.

We must tackle wicked challenges with different tools and mechanisms to chip away and make a direct impact. Because some challenges are here to stay. And so are we.