Dragonfly Ventures uses a creative, holistic, and integrated capital approach to bring our vision and mission to life.
How We Invest
Our financial and non-financial vehicles include private investments, charitable giving, public equity, sponsorships, convenings, and collaborative capacity building.
Dragonfly Ventures defines integrated capital as the merging of our entire portfolio under one comprehensive vision and process. Every investment decision is carefully considered to match our mission, vision and values, including deep screening of our public equity portfolio, thoughtful collaboration with our private investments, and values-alignment with our charitable partners.
Our Asset Classes
To complement our four focus areas, we have created our own unconventional asset classes: Nurture, Hybrid, and Harvest.
Our internal classification process allows for fluidity between these asset classes as companies and organizations evolve.
Our asset classes consider the following attributes:
Alignment with our mission, vision, values, and focus areas
Expectation around financial return
Convention versus disruption: Is the business upholding outdated business practises or are they creating disruptive, new ones? This applies to both the internal operations of the company and the product or service they are creating
Growth and exits: Our preference is to invest in companies choosing reasonable non-aggressive growth and exits that won’t compromise mission, vision or values
Nurture
Alignment with vision, mission and values within our focus areas is first and foremost rather than capital preservation and financial returns. If a financial return occurs, it is evaluated in the context of equity and fairness for all stakeholders. Ecological and social sustainability are of key importance. Our primary hope as we nurture for-profit investments in this “asset class” is that they will eventually produce a financial return at a level that upholds the mission.
Examples of financial tools that we use for nurture contributions include:
Sponsorships
Charitable grants
Debt instruments such as revolving funds, bonds, royalty financing, convertible debt, zero-interest loans.
Direct equity in early stage companies
Charitable grants are made through The Dragonfly Fund, a donor-advised fund at MakeWay.
Hybrid
These commitments have strong alignment with our vision, mission, values, and focus areas coupled with a financial return. These companies aren’t required to have perfect governance practices or a perfect product or service, but they are consciously making cleaner, more equitable choices in how they operate and what they are producing. Hybrid investments will range widely on the spectrum between nurture and harvest.
Examples of financial tools that we use for hybrid contributions include:
Debt instruments such as revolving funds, bonds, royalty financing, convertible debt, low-interest loans
Direct equity in later stage companies
Venture capital funds
Harvest
These are investments where we participate in specific investment vehicles knowing they are largely imperfect and are increasingly influenced by public demand for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices. Within harvest, we have an expectation of financial return. We achieve alignment with our vision, mission, values, and focus areas through the use of deep screening and shareholder activism and proxy voting in partnership with SHARE.
Examples of financial tools that we use for harvest contributions include:
Direct equity
Publicly traded equity
Venture capital funds
Debt instruments such as corporate and government bonds.
FAQs
For additional information, and answers to some frequently asked questions, please visit our FAQ section.
Our Partners
Below is a snapshot of some of the companies and organizations that we work with or have supported through investments, grants, and sponsorships.
We are deeply grateful for our partners who are gifting us with education along the journey.
