New Guidance
Demystifying Program-Related Investing: Lessons from Recent Adopters
Demystifying Program-Related Investing: Lessons from Recent Adopters was produced through a partnership between the Social Finance Institute, the Impact Investing Research Lab at the Impact, Value, and Sustainable Business Initiative at the Wharton School, and the Center for High Impact Philanthropy at the University of Pennsylvania.
Program-related investments (PRIs) enable foundations to provide loans, equity capital, and other return-generating financing that prioritizes social mission over financial performance. Existing research has thoroughly documented barriers to PRI adoption, including resource constraints and cultural resistance, but the focus on obstacles obscures an important reality: Some foundations have successfully integrated PRIs into their philanthropic practice, and many have done so recently.
What distinguishes these recent adopters? How did they navigate challenges that deter so many of their peers?
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This research distills lessons from 36 U.S. foundations that began making PRIs between 2016 and 2023, translating their experiences into practical guidance for foundations considering this transition. The project documents a more nuanced reality: PRIs are not inherently difficult; rather, foundation experiences vary dramatically based on factors that organizations can deliberately manage. Success depends less on organizational size or sophistication than on deliberately managing complexity, capacity, and congruity.
By demystifying PRI adoption while respecting its genuine challenges, this research helps more foundations find their own path toward successful implementation.
Our Guidance
Talent for Giving: Building the Team to Help You Do Good
For high net worth donors, the potential to create positive social change is significant. The question is: how do you identify the right talent and build the team to realize that potential? This guidebook is our answer to that question.
Talent for Giving: Building the Team to Help You Do Good, A guide for high net worth donors, has strategies for finding the people, talent, and networks to help you do more good with your giving.
Program-Related Investments
In this paper you will find an explanation of the barriers to mission investing, also known as Program Related Investment and Mission Related Investment, and a concluding hypothesis about what it will take to help remove the barriers.
Educating foundation leadership, building foundation staff expertise, improving data quality and lowering the cost of making a mission investment are all issues to understand and address. If our hypothesis is correct, the time is now to build the necessary data, education and support capabilities to help private foundations better access private sector investment tools to advance their mission.
The XX Factor: A Framework and Guidebook for Improving the Lives of Women and Girls
Globally, one of the most powerful ways to create social impact is to improve the lives of women and girls. But what does it mean to ‘improve the lives of women and girls’ and how can you know whether you’re really making a difference? To answer these questions, the Center for High Impact Philanthropy (CHIP), with the generous support of the Tara Health Foundation, identified The XX Factor, the five dimensions of women’s lives.
Women's Index: Developing a Tool for Aligning Financial Investments with Gender Equity
The XX Factor identified five dimensions foundational for the lives of women and girls: health, education, economic empowerment, personal safety, and legal rights. For the Women’s Index, CHIP in collaboration with Women of the World Endowment conducted research and analysis of social impact indicators available to inform investment with a gender focus within the sovereign debt space.
Bold Ideas for Philanthropists to Drive Social Change
In this guidance, you’ll find the best ideas from the 1,904 proposed solutions submitted to 100&Change. MacArthur assembled a list of its Top 200 and from there chose eight semifinalists. But rather than leave the remaining 192 on the cutting room floor, MacArthur turned to CHIP.
For this work, we initially analyzed each of the 192 applications to understand the social impact goal – i.e., what is the meaningful, positive change the applicant seeks to create? We considered the problem the organization was trying to solve, who would be impacted by the solution, and how their lives would improve.
SeaChange: An Opt-In Approach to Program Related Investment
In this paper, SeaChange Capital Partners describe how they have put PRI in action through the New York Pooled PRI Fund (NYPRI), a flexible, high-impact loans to New York City nonprofits while also offering attractive program-related investment PRI opportunities to foundations. With 12 participating foundations, NYPRI has facilitated increased PRI-making by its participants and provided loans to 19 nonprofits that would not otherwise have had access to capital for their projects.
Read how NYPRI combines an efficient investment process with an “opt-in” funding model that could be used by other foundations to help them invest their capital in nonprofits in their own communities.
Blogs
New applied research: Demystifying Program Related Investing: Insights from Recent Adopters
A new research report offers clearer understanding of how foundations are integrating program‑related investments (PRIs) into their philanthropic practice. Demystifying Program‑Related Investing: Lessons from...
Key Takeaways from 2026 High Impact Giving Toolkit Launch Webinar
On January 21st, the Center for High Impact Philanthropy (CHIP) hosted a webinar featuring an overview of the 2026 High Impact Giving Toolkit and...
CHIP’s Four Philanthropic Plays and High Impact Philanthropy Academy Featured by Devex
"Collective action can advance progress, especially when the world is in what Katherina Rosqueta, founding executive director at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for...
PRI in Action
SeaChange: An Opt-In Approach to Program Related Investment
In this paper, SeaChange Capital Partners describe how they have put PRI in action through the New York Pooled PRI Fund (NYPRI), a flexible, high-impact loans to New York City nonprofits while also offering attractive program-related investment PRI opportunities to foundations. With 12 participating foundations, NYPRI has facilitated increased PRI-making by its participants and provided loans to 19 nonprofits that would not otherwise have had access to capital for their projects.
Read how NYPRI combines an efficient investment process with an “opt-in” funding model that could be used by other foundations to help them invest their capital in nonprofits in their own communities.