Unlocking international investment

Background

For corporates and non-profits alike, a complex business model can sometimes be a barrier to attracting a broad range of potential investors. A good communications strategy, designed with the audience in mind, can help break down those walls.

Here, the client was an NGO based in Cali, a city in Colombia. Its business model, referred to as “hybrid value chain for vulnerable communities,” was multifaceted. The NGO directly employed around 500 local women to provide food and daycare to about 8,000 children in a deprived area of the city. These services, in turn, freed the children’s mothers to return to work or education, helping to improve their families’ quality of life.

In addition, the NGO took care to source its supplies of food and clothing from local small businesses, in the process supporting the local economy more broadly.

Having achieved remarkable success locally, the NGO was looking to scale up. With sufficient funding, it estimated that it could reach some 800,000 children in deprived communities across Colombia.

To do this, it would need to attract the interest of large international funders, including major foundations, aid agencies, and multilateral institutions like the World Bank Group.

That was where the challenges began.

Challenge

First, the NGO was entirely dependent on a single funder, in this case the Colombian government. While the state funding was welcome, it would never be enough to allow the organisation to scale. More seriously, it left the NGO prone to sudden budget cuts, whether for fiscal or political reasons.

Second, the organisation had little to no experience pitching itself to other potential backers, particularly those outside Colombia. It lacked a unified communications strategy, and its existing messaging was patchy, unfocused, and misaligned with funders’ priorities.

Third, as we have seen, the client’s business model was complex, with many moving parts. Funding conversations were getting bogged down in describing this model, at the expense of showing prospective investors how the organisation could sustain itself at a radically bigger scale.

The client therefore found itself cut off from potential funders: “Hidden away in the barrio,” as one executive put it.

Setting a baseline

To grasp the client’s business and learn its authentic voice, Rachel analysed its existing documentation and interviewed a range of team members, from executives to on-the-ground program officers.

Thanks to her facility with the local language, she was able to carry out these interviews in Spanish as well as English.

Crucially, Rachel also sought to understand the point of view of the funders the NGO was trying to reach. As well as analysing their annual reports and other published statements, she interviewed selected staff members for an unvarnished, up-to-the-minute take on what they were looking for in an investment.

Equipped with these insights, Rachel was ready to create a communications strategy that would resonate with the target audience.

First, she translated the client’s business model into terms that funders would understand and relate to, emphasising the model’s inclusivity, impact, scalability, and sustainability.

Among other products, she created a visually striking slide presentation structured around the UN Sustainable Development Goals, a rubric that funders would instantly recognise.

A tailored approach

Next, Rachel carried out a stakeholder analysis of the NGO’s target audience. She identified three separate groups with distinct interests:

• Foundations focused on childhood nutrition, who would be looking for the organisation’s positive impact on children.
• Foundations focused on female empowerment, who would be most interested in how the organisation helped women find employment and education.
• Multilaterals, aid agencies, and other generalist funders, who would want reassurance that the organisation’s business model was impactful, scalable, and sustainable.

Rachel crafted these messages into simple, accessible factsheets, framed and tailored to each audience segment.

These served both as collateral to be handed out to prospects and as useful checklists for the NGO’s own staff.

Throughout the engagement, Rachel delivered the project bilingually, making the strategy and messaging available in both English and Spanish.

Changing the conversation

The organization quickly earned international attention for its impact. For example:

• It attracted interest from big global funders, including the International Finance Corporation, which sent a team from headquarters to learn about the project.
• It became the Colombia point of contact for a broader network of NGOs across Latin America, thereby gaining a supportive community as well as a network for sharing knowledge and expertise.
  
  

With a new mindset, a new communications plan, and a new range of interested investors, the organization was poised to take its impact national and its pitch global.