Acumen Fund

One day every human being will have access to the critical goods and services they need – including affordable health, water, housing, energy – so that they can make decisions and choices for themselves and pursue lives of greater purpose. This is where dignity starts – not just for the poor but for everyone on earth.

Acumen exists to help end poverty by changing how the world addresses it. We do this in two ways. We invest patient capital to identify, strengthen and scale business models that effectively serve the poor. And we champion and spread this approach as an effective complement to traditional aid, which can create dependence, or pure market approaches, which can bypass the actual needs of the poor.

1. Traditional aid and charity often meet immediate needs but too often fail to enable people to solve their own problems over the long term.

2. Pure market-based approaches often fail to meet the needs of those who need access the most.

3. The key is Patient Capital which combines the best of charity, aid, government, business, and the markets.