Mission and Impact
As a nonprofit investor
Investing at the Edge of the Market
As a 501(c)(3), Elemental Impact leverages philanthropic and government grants to carry out our mission—scaling critical technologies and deploying projects that accelerate deep climate and local impact.
What makes our model unique is that we use grant dollars to make impact-first, risk-tolerant investments in climate startups either as loans, equity investments, or hybrid products like the D-SAFE. We then provide robust technical services to de-risk these investments and ensure that technologies are deployed in close partnership with local communities.
As a nonprofit investor, we make investment decisions based on both climate and community impact—and the potential to attract later stage investment. We take small stakes in our portfolio companies—when they succeed through acquisitions or exits, those returns come back to our 501(c)(3) as earned revenue and are recycled into future projects.
Our Approach
Commercializing Technology
Elemental’s 15 years of experience implementing 150+ energy, food, water, and transportation projects in real communities have directly informed our unique approach to technology deployment. We’ve seen what it takes for entrepreneurs to reach broad commercialization and become market leaders and it’s not just a financing gap—it’s also a workforce, engineering, and development gap. What do they need from us to cross the bridge? Catalytic capital, project expertise, community partnership, and a trusted network of creative investors.
Catalytic capital
With grant funding from our philanthropic and government partners, Elemental can invest where traditional capital markets won’t. This means we can respond meaningfully to critical needs from our entrepreneurs, invest at the frontiers of climate innovation, and create new financial tools that fill gaps and unlock commercial-scale deployment. And our non-profit model means returns from our investments are recycled back to create more impact.
Project expertise
Entrepreneurs excel at technology innovation, yet often tell us that constructing and financing a startup’s first set of commercial installations requires a high degree of project development expertise that their team may not yet have. We equip companies with specialized expertise needed during deployments—from local stakeholder engagement and engineering and procurement—helping them scale their business models and implement in local communities.
Local partnership
Technology deployment succeeds when it’s rooted in the community. We’ve learned that early engagement—with local residents, leaders, customers, and policymakers—helps design projects with local context and place-based needs at the center. Our hands-on approach to community engagement helps entrepreneurs build authentic partnerships that ensure both technology adoption and local benefits.
Mobilizing investors
Scaling these critical technologies requires more than capital—it demands new market connections and creative financing approaches. We convene diverse capital providers, from green banks and insurance providers to institutional investors, to syndicate deals and create new pathways for financing early commercial projects.
We’ve grown into a broader platform
with a family of funds working in concert to mobilize capital from philanthropy, government, and private investors. Our platform includes the original Elemental non-profit investment vehicle supported by more than $210M in philanthropy and government funding to date, as well as the $94M fund Earthshot Ventures launched in 2021.
