(Illustration by Brian Stauffer)
In the spring of 1970, a group of US soldiers stationed in Saigon organized something unusual: an exhibition of custom Ford Mustangs, shipped halfway around the world to boost morale in a war that was going badly. For most Vietnamese, it was a curiosity. For one small boy, it was a revelation.
Hau Thai-Tang was 5 years old when he pressed through the crowd and saw the car for the first time—the long hood, the muscular haunches, the suggestion of speed even standing still. He didn’t have the words for what he felt, but he understood something instinctively: This object carried meaning. It stood, he would say decades later, for freedom.
Five years after that encounter, Saigon fell. The Thai-Tang family fled the chaos of April 1975, boarding a US military aircraft with thousands of other refugees, carrying little more than what they could hold. They passed through Guam and Camp Pendleton in California, before landing in New York City—strangers in a country that was itself deeply ambivalent about their arrival. Polls at the time showed that a majority of Americans opposed admitting Vietnamese refugees. Congress debated whether the cost was worth it.
Hau Thai-Tang went on to study mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon, joined Ford straight out of college, and in 2005 became the chief engineer of the Ford Mustang redesign—the man most responsible for reimagining one of the most iconic American cars ever built. The generation of Mustang he led has since generated an estimated $60-80 billion in revenue for Ford Motor Company. He would eventually become Ford’s chief product development and purchasing officer, overseeing more than $100 billion in annual spending.
His is not a story about exceptional genius triumphing over adversity, though it is certainly that. It is a story about what happens when a society chooses to open a door. About what becomes possible—economically, culturally, humanly—when it creates an infrastructure of welcome. About the compounding returns, measured across decades and in ways no spreadsheet could fully capture, of belonging.
In the 50 years since Hau Thai-Tang arrived at Camp Pendleton, the global refugee population has grown from roughly 2.5 million to more than 120 million people worldwide. The political consensus that enabled his resettlement has eroded significantly, replaced in the United States and in countries around the world by a politics of restriction that treats refugees primarily as a burden to be managed, rather than as a population with agency, talent, and unrealized economic potential.
For the past decade, we have conducted fieldwork on every continent; met resilient entrepreneurs displaced from South Sudan, Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela, and Democratic Republic of the Congo; and learned about their incredible contributions to places like Kenya, Jordan, Poland, Mexico, and Rwanda. When given the chance, the displaced prove themselves to be resourceful drivers of growth.
Investing in refugee-led enterprises, companies supporting refugees, and the communities welcoming them transforms tragedy into economic and social gain for all. We launched the Refugee Investment Network and promoted refugee-lens investing (modeled on the success of gender-lens investing) to encourage impact investors to use their capital to help millions fleeing war and violence. Our new book, Banking on Belonging: Why Investing in Refugee Entrepreneurs Benefits Everyone, tells dozens of stories of transformative and scalable solutions.
Microfinance for Entrepreneurs on the Move
The United Nations defines a refugee as someone who has fled their home for fear of persecution or violence and has crossed an international border. Refugees are not the only ones displaced by conflict who need support. In most conflict situations, many others will flee their homes to escape violence but will be displaced internally, remaining inside the borders of their country, where they are closer to the fighting and farther removed from international aid. These people are generally referred to as internally displaced persons (IDPs). Refugees who have traveled to a country and requested to be recognized as refugees and provided the related international protection are referred to as asylum seekers. All three of these groups are fleeing for their lives because of a well-founded fear of violence, which sets them apart from immigrants seeking economic opportunity.
To get a better sense of the field and its possibilities, let’s examine three cases that show the power of courageous capital to support refugees at scale. They cover examples from around the world that use different financial models to achieve their sustainable impact. This work is being done by social innovators like the readers of this magazine—impact investors, social entrepreneurs, business owners, and changemakers who are deciding to act in the face of government inaction, if not hostility. We can advance economies of belonging, instead of exclusion, and we can all be part of the movement.
First, let us consider Kiva’s World Refugee Fund. Kiva is a nonprofit microlending platform that by 2016, when we started working with them, had provided more than $1 billion in microfinance loans at 0 percent interest to entrepreneurs all over the world, including to displaced Palestinians living in the West Bank. Kiva’s model harnesses the goodwill of crowdfunding lenders—citizens who commit small increments of capital, such as $25 or $100, to microentrepreneurs whose financing campaigns are most often sourced and vetted by Kiva’s trusted microfinance partners operating in various emerging or underserved markets. Kiva’s platform seemed so promising that we gave a TED talk in 2014 highlighting some of the first refugee lending the organization was doing.
Lev Plaves, who in 2016 was Kiva’s Middle East portfolio manager, told us that while Kiva’s lending in the West Bank was working, partners of microfinance institutions (MFIs) in other markets remained skeptical. Most of them perceived lending to refugees to be too risky; after all, in most cases they had no credit history, no collateral, and no permanent residence. The partners assumed that most refugees would return home at some point soon. “Why would I lend to a refugee to start his business if he’s going to leave and go home before he can repay me?” Plaves said they asked repeatedly.
Like we did, Plaves knew that these perceived risks were unsubstantiated, but that microfinance operators would need data and evidence in more than one context to change their minds. He proposed launching a larger pool of microfinance capital and extending Kiva’s 0 percent interest loans to a portfolio of MFI partners in multiple countries, with few to no strings attached. The MFI partners would essentially have access to risk-free R&D capital to experiment with lending to displaced entrepreneurs. If the entrepreneurs repaid their loans, the MFIs would agree to expand their lending programs while giving Kiva highly valuable data on refugee repayment rates. This idea was novel and deeply needed. But would Kiva support Plaves’ proposal? How would Kiva pull this off, and how could we help to make it a success?
Investors may already be making refugee-lens investments unknowingly, particularly if they work in emerging markets.
By May 2017, Plaves had mobilized the support of Kiva’s leadership. We agreed to officially kick off our partnership by launching a Kiva refugee-supporting crowdlending campaign on June 20, World Refugee Day. Kiva had already secured about $60,000, Plaves reported, but wanted at least $250,000 in funds to match any loans that the public contributed. We thought the match could be syndicated across members of the Tent Partnership for Refugees, a new group of businesses committed to supporting refugees and steered by the Turkish yogurt entrepreneur Hamdi Ulukaya of Chobani. Commitments to the World Refugee Fund would give corporations, foundations, and private philanthropists the opportunity to match one to one any lending on Kiva.org to displaced peoples and host communities from Lebanon to Colombia to Rwanda. Plaves provided a thorough review of Kiva’s track record to date, including the fact that it had already successfully loaned more than $2.6 million to refugees and IDPs. The fund’s first interested backers included both Tent and Anne-Marie Grey, the executive director and CEO of USA for UNHCR, the US fundraising arm of the UN’s refugee agency.
Thanks to these courageous founding partners, we had our match partners lined up within a few weeks. On June 20, 2017, Kiva’s crowdfunding page for the World Refugee Fund went live. The next morning, Plaves texted us to say that we had not only hit our goal of $500,000 in loans but doubled it. Within 24 hours, every refugee and IDP entrepreneur’s loan listed on Kiva.org was fully subscribed, totaling more than $1 million in fulfilled loans. This success quickly became the springboard for a larger campaign, which raised $9 million in refugee-supporting lending capital by the close of 2017 to help address the long-term needs of host communities and families displaced in the largest refugee crisis since World War II, one being driven by conflicts in Syria, Sudan, and Afghanistan.
The World Refugee Day campaign proved three things. First, businesses and private-sector partners were interested in giving refugees and other displaced peoples access to credit and financial services that could in turn help create jobs and better livelihoods. Second, and perhaps even more important, the broader public believed in doing the same thing. If Kiva’s model proved anything, it was that ordinary people can make a huge difference. Third, the experiment showed that refugee borrowers are just as reliable as traditional microentrepreneurs. With the data from the first pilots, Kiva was able to mobilize even more philanthropic capital—more than $20 million loaned to tens of thousands of refugees since the start of 2016. Kiva has found that repayment rates for refugee loans are the same as those of nonrefugees.
Having demonstrated the viability of refugee lending, Kiva developed a new, for-profit investment fund—the first of its kind—to scale its proven refugee-lending programs around the world. The Kiva Refugee Investment Fund launched as a $32.5 million, five-year, closed-end fund consisting of $20 million in debt from the US International Development Finance Corporation (USDFC), with a fixed rate of return of 2.5 percent, $10 million in equity, and a variable rate of return targeted at 5.5 to 6.5 percent. By June 2024, the Kiva Refugee Investment Fund deployed $40.7 million and reached more than 51,400 borrowers. Investors that participated in the fund included the family office Ceniarth; the faith-based investors Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart and the Mercy Partnership Fund; the Soros Economic Development Fund, which provided an anchor investment of $5 million; and the USDFC.
This case provides an important lesson: Early courageous capital can be catalytic. Not only did the commitments by Kiva, Tent, and USA for UNHCR directly support displaced entrepreneurs, measurably improving their lives and empowering them to be agents of their own destiny, but it also set in motion a new model, which in turn spawned new data that established that investing in refugees is a viable model for scalable impact.
Equity Investments in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises
A second story of early courageous capital in refugee investing comes from Acumen, the well-known global nonprofit founded by Jacqueline Novogratz in 2001 that addresses poverty by investing in sustainable businesses, leaders, and ideas. Novogratz’s concept of “patient capital,” which she shared with the world through a popular TED talk, offered a new, middle way between the zero returns from philanthropic giving and the outsize returns expected in traditional investing. Patient capital invests in social-impact companies over the long term and supports them to succeed, scale, and magnify their impact.
Over the past two decades, Acumen has raised hundreds of millions of dollars in philanthropic capital and invested it in early-stage companies whose products and services enable the poor to transform their lives. It launched Acumen Academy to boost the skills and capacity of social entrepreneurs. After establishing the effectiveness of its model, Acumen also launched Acumen Capital Partners, a for-profit subsidiary of the nonprofit Acumen that allows funds that are seeking impact alongside financial returns to invest. This subsidiary makes investments to scale catalytic companies that are addressing poverty. Acumen has mobilized hundreds of millions of dollars more in impact capital through this for-profit vehicle.
Acumen Accelerators is a network of investment accelerators that support entrepreneurs and early-stage startups through a combination of education, mentoring, networking, and investing. Acumen has established many types of accelerators designed to address specific issues and geographical regions: Pakistan Agriculture, Green Growth, Gender Equity and Advancement, and more. These accelerators help to refine business models, accelerate social impact, gain feedback from peers and Acumen staff, and build relationships with like-minded social innovators. In 2022, Acumen launched its Accelerator for Ventures Serving Displaced People to refine and develop scalable business models that advance sustainable livelihoods for forcibly displaced populations in East Africa. Fourteen teams from East Africa were selected for Acumen Academy’s accelerator; collectively, they employed 819 people and worked with 86,000 forcibly displaced people (75 percent of whom were women) and 38,500 host-community members (of which around 71 percent were women) across Kenya, Uganda, and Ethiopia.
In 2020, the Refugee Investment Network partnered with Acumen to do a retrospective review of Acumen’s investing in East Africa to better understand just how much refugee-lens investing it had already embarked on. It turned out that Acumen was a leader in the space before refugee-lens investing even had a name. Its existing East Africa portfolio included several businesses that supported displaced communities through service provisions and employment.
Bolstered by the mapping exercise, the Refugee Investment Network and Acumen collaborated in the fall of 2022 to convene the world’s first global Refugee Lens Investing Summit in Nairobi, Kenya. The event hosted 100 critical stakeholders from 68 organizations representing the emerging refugee-lens ecosystem in East Africa, including social enterprises, impact investors, philanthropic foundations, donor governments, and humanitarian and technical experts. Roughly a third of the attendees were from refugee-lens investment businesses, 40 percent were investors or funders, and the rest were from ecosystem organizations.
Joy Gikandi, the program lead at Acumen Academy East Africa, helped showcase the work of some of the entrepreneurs in Acumen’s refugee accelerator, including William Tinyefuza, the cofounder and COO of Turaco Valley Foods. He told the story of his company, a social enterprise focused on investing in smallholder farmers within refugee-hosting areas. The business provides free farming advice by mobile phone, distributes fertilizer and seeds, and demonstrates best agronomics practices on its own farm in the Rwamwanja Refugee Settlement in Uganda. Turaco ensures that 70 percent of its raw materials come directly from refugee farmers and 30 percent come from host communities, and it purchases them at 5 to 10 percent above the market rate. Turaco Valley Foods is just one of dozens of sustainable social enterprises that the convening showcased.
The Acumen case offers important lessons to other foundations, impact investors, and change agents. First, investors may already be making refugee-lens investments unknowingly, particularly if they work in emerging markets. Conducting a portfolio review with the refugee lens is a good first task if you are an investor interested in this work. Second, you can use models and structures that have already worked well for your organization and apply them to the displacement context. Third, you can pursue multiple sustainable-development goals while also proactively supporting the displaced as borrowers, portfolio companies, suppliers, and employees. Whether you are passionate about gender equity, financial inclusion, climate change, early-childhood education, or regenerative agriculture, you can have an impact on any of those critical issues, as well as measurably improve the lives of people forcibly displaced by violence. In most cases, bringing intentionality and impact-based financial incentives to your portfolio companies can enable the extension of key services to refugee customers.
Financing Workforce Integration of Refugees
Our third case study takes us to Massachusetts, which in 2017 faced a dilemma familiar to many state and local governments: how to integrate the thousands of immigrants and refugees arriving in the Boston area each year without risking scarce public funding on unproven programs. Non-English speakers represented significant untapped workforce potential—many had professional experience and a strong work ethic but struggled, because of language barriers, to access jobs that matched their capabilities. Traditional workforce-development programs showed mixed results, and state-budget constraints made officials reluctant to expand services without clear evidence of impact.
It was also about economic-integration infrastructure that enabled refugees and immigrants to contribute at their full potential.
Jewish Vocational Service (JVS), one of the city’s largest community-based workforce and adult-education providers, had developed an innovative approach using integrated English-language instruction combined with job-search assistance and coaching. But scaling the program required up-front capital the state wasn’t willing to commit without proof it would work.
This tension between the need for immigrant workforce integration and fiscal uncertainty created the conditions for a different approach: outcomes-based financing that would tie public payment directly to measurable results. Social Finance CEO Tracy Palandjian and her team structured a solution that aligned stakeholder incentives in a way that traditional grant funding never could. The Massachusetts Pathways to Economic Advancement project deployed a Pay for Success model—also known as a Development Impact Bond—that fundamentally shifted who bore financial risk and who benefited from success. Under this model, private investors provide risk capital up front and are paid back only when predetermined, measurable outcomes are achieved.
Here’s how it worked in this case: Impact investors provided up-front capital to JVS Boston to deliver its English for Advancement program to approximately 2,000 limited-English speakers over six years. JVS integrated vocational English-language classes with job-search assistance, career coaching, and employer connections, helping participants transition to employment and higher-wage jobs. An independent evaluator, Economic Mobility Corporation, measured wage growth via a randomized controlled trial (RCT)—the first such rigorous study of a workforce-development program for English-language learners. Massachusetts agreed to repay investors only if participants received measurable wage increases.
The structure was innovative: Instead of paying for activities or outputs (such as the number of people served or classes completed), the state paid for outcomes—in this case, wage growth. If the program failed to deliver results, investors absorbed the loss. If it succeeded, the state paid for proven impact and investors received returns commensurate with the social value the program created. This innovation went beyond financial engineering; it created fundamentally different relationships among government, service providers, and investors. Each stakeholder had incentives aligned around a singular guiding metric: better economic outcomes for immigrant workers.
For state officials, the Pay for Success structure solved a political and fiscal problem: They could expand workforce services for English-language learners without up-front budget risk. If the program worked, they paid for real results—wage increases that generated tax revenue and reduced public-assistance needs. If it didn’t work, the state lost nothing. Such outcomes-based contracts create accountability in ways that traditional grants simply do not. Service providers—whether social enterprises or nonprofit organizations—have incentives to iterate and improve, instead of just spending down grants. Investors, likewise, have incentives to support program effectiveness.
Forty impact investors committed capital to this deal, including Maycomb Capital, the Living Cities Blended Catalyst Fund, Prudential Financial, the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy, Blue Haven Initiative, The Boston Foundation, the Boston Impact Initiative, ImpactAssets, the Inherent Foundation, the Kresge Foundation, The Shapiro Foundation, and the Sorenson Impact Foundation. Their investment thesis was straightforward: If integrated language training and job placement could demonstrably increase immigrant wages, Massachusetts would repay principal, plus a return that reflected both financial- and social-value creation.
These refugee-lens investors saw an additional dimension. Yes, this was about workforce development, but it was also about economic-integration infrastructure that enabled resettled refugees and immigrants to contribute at their full potential. Several of these investors have supported refugee entrepreneurship in other contexts, but this deal represented a different intervention point: helping refugees access employment pathways that matched their skills.
For JVS, the performance-based structure fundamentally changed operations. Traditional grant funding pays for activities regardless of outcomes. The Pay for Success model required JVS to focus relentlessly on what worked—tracking participant progress, iterating on curriculum and job-placement strategies, and working closely with employers to ensure employee candidates were getting the exact types of training they needed to succeed in their new jobs. Ultimately, JVS delivered a model that integrated three elements rarely combined: contextualized English instruction (teaching language through workplace scenarios), job-readiness coaching, and direct employer connections. Participants learned the specific communication skills needed for jobs they could realistically obtain, then received coaching and placement support to land those positions. The program went well beyond merely teaching English on its own.
Economic Mobility Corporation’s final evaluation, six years after the program kicked off, validated the model with rigorous evidence. The English for Advancement program produced a 7 percent wage increase for participants overall after two years and a 13 percent increase for those unaffected by the early pandemic’s labor market disruptions. Specifically, average annual earnings increased by $1,175 for all participants, and by $2,478 for those who completed the program before COVID-19 upended employment markets. Massachusetts repaid investors based on these results, delivering returns that reflected both the financial and social value the program created.
But the most significant outcome wasn’t the payback to investors—it was what happened next. The evidence was so compelling that Massachusetts signed a new outcomes-based contract with JVS to continue the English for Advancement program beyond the initial project period. The state’s supplemental budget allocated an additional $10 million in funding to JVS for rapid reemployment services, and the success of the Pathways project influenced the state to adopt pay-for-performance contracting more broadly across workforce development.
The program “ended” in 2023, but only in the sense that the initial Pay for Success deal concluded. The model was so effective that the state embedded it into ongoing policy and expanded funding—exactly the systemic change that outcomes-based financing aims to achieve.
The Massachusetts Pathways case demonstrates four critical lessons for refugee and immigrant economic integration. First, outcomes-based financing can mobilize capital for integration that traditional grants cannot. The state wasn’t willing to risk public funds on expansion without evidence. Impact investors filled that gap, enabling JVS to scale services while the state waited for proof. Just as in Kiva’s efforts to collect data on repayment rates, once the income gains materialized, additional funding followed—in this case, from the public sector. Second, rigorous evaluation changes policy. The RCT created evidence that shifted how Massachusetts approached workforce development for English-language learners. When policy makers can point to 13 percent wage increases from a specific intervention, budget allocations become easier to justify. Third, small initial deals catalyze broader adoption. The Pathways project started by serving 2,000 immigrants. It established a model that the state—and others—can replicate and expand. The $10 million follow-on funding and broader adoption of pay-for-performance contracting demonstrate the leverage effect of demonstration projects. Fourth, success requires alignment across all stakeholders. The deal worked because everyone had incentives aligned around wage outcomes: The state paid for results, investors got returns from impact, JVS had performance incentives, and participants benefited.
A Blueprint for Economies of Belonging
As these three cases illustrate, refugees and IDPs present an enormous investment opportunity for the private sector to integrate them into the broader economy in ways that benefit all. Our research has uncovered the blueprint for building inclusive economies that will enable the sector to move forward, past governments that are ambivalent, obstructionist, or hostile to displaced people.
Specifically, here are five strategies for impact investors and social innovation professionals to build economies of belonging:1
1. Forge a collaboration across private-sector impact-investing networks (including the Global Impact Investing Network, Toniic, the Mission Investors Exchange, and other regional impact-investing groups) to unlock $1 billion in private refugee-lens investing. Every year these powerful networks organize global convenings in which mission-driven investors flock together to learn about strategies, tools, and frameworks to increase their impact. We believe a series of refugee-lens investing efforts at each of these global convenings can help educate investors about this powerful vehicle for impact and forge collaborations to mobilize significant new pools of capital for refugees.
2. Mobilize catalytic capital from philanthropy. Impact investing has grown over the past 15 years with large private foundations, who realize that if they restrict themselves to the annual grants taken from 5 percent of their endowments, they lose billions of dollars of potential impact by not deploying the funds differently. Philanthropists and foundations serving the displaced should apply the refugee lens to making program-related investments (PRIs) and mission-related investments (MRIs) and should use their philanthropic funds as catalytic capital to unlock new private-sector capital that can help the displaced and their host communities.
Let us explain. Increasingly, private and community foundations have become comfortable moving beyond 0 percent-return grants by deploying some of their philanthropic funding to invest in social enterprises. In this way, they can achieve their purported mission while also recovering the grant money and using the funds again for further impact. These are called PRIs because they draw from the 5 percent of funding traditionally earmarked for programs but can be paid back with no interest (a recoverable grant) or some level of interest—often just enough to keep pace with inflation to ensure capital preservation.
Foundations have also dipped into their endowments and, instead of investing only in public equities and through large asset managers, decided to invest some of their corpus toward impact. These are MRIs. Large foundations and private family offices that have historically supported refugees and the displaced have a huge opportunity to use and promote PRIs and MRIs for refugee-lens investing deals.
All business leaders should consider how they can incorporate refugees into their supply chains, services, products, and global operations.
In addition, private and community foundations have learned that they can have outsize impact by blending their philanthropic grants and low-interest PRIs with market-rate capital. Blended finance is the use of catalytic capital from public or philanthropic sources to increase private-sector investment in economic-development projects. For example, an affordable-housing development in a community hosting a large, resettled refugee population would enable foundations to catalyze the participation of more risk-averse lenders, like private-sector banks or investors. By partnering with global leaders in blended finance, foundations could establish platforms for connecting, convening, and building deals. Convergence, the global network for blended finance that exists to increase private investment in emerging markets and developing economies, can be a critical player here.
Those working in this space should especially emphasize faith-based impact investors. The history of impact investing began with faith-based funders. Quakers chose not to invest in the slave trade and slave ships. Then Protestants decided to not invest in “sin stocks” like gambling, alcohol, and prostitution. Catholic nuns, Lutheran congregations, and Jewish values-aligned impact- investing funds have been directing their dollars to investments in line with their values for years. “Welcoming the other” is an important concept in Judeo-Christian and other religious traditions. In 2018, for instance, the Vatican organized an impact-investing conference in which we had the opportunity to learn much from faith-based investors around the world that are aligning their portfolios and retirement funds with their values. Refugees were one of the four core topic areas. We call on other gatherings of faith-based investors to begin conversations about how they might use their investing to support the forcibly displaced in ways that align with their values.
3. Enable community lenders to serve refugee entrepreneurs. In the United States, community-development financial institutions (CDFIs) already expand economic opportunity in low-income communities by offering access to financial products and services for local residents and businesses in partnership with community foundations and other local service providers, including banks, credit unions, loan funds, and venture-capital firms. CDFIs often help families finance their first homes, support community members starting businesses, and invest in local health centers, schools, or community centers. They strive to foster economic opportunity and revitalize neighborhoods.
Accordingly, CDFIs can provide last-mile infrastructure for refugee economic integration. They work in the communities where refugees resettle and understand local conditions. However, most CDFIs don’t actively target refugee entrepreneurs, because they lack the data and tools to justify it. A little proactive thought and outreach could go a long way in connecting these CDFIs with newly arrived residents and helping them start businesses, buy homes, and begin building assets, as an extension of their existing portfolio and mandate. Refugee support organizations have an opportunity here to network with new partners, like local lenders, in building economies of belonging.
4. Engage corporate partners for hiring, supply chains, and markets. All business leaders should consider how they can incorporate refugees and refugee businesses into their supply chains, target services, products, and global business operations. Large companies can have large impacts. The Business Roundtable and other industry and trade associations of large Fortune 500 companies could mobilize commitments to support the displaced through the private sector. In June 2016, the Obama administration began this work with the launch of the Partnership for Refugees, a public-private initiative to help refugees worldwide. The Tent Partnership for Refugees carried on this work during the first Trump presidency and expanded commitments to companies across the globe. At this moment, a renewed set of public commitments by top global CEOs would be welcome.
Small businesses can take small steps: Hire one refugee employee, partner with one refugee-owned supplier, or target services to refugee communities. Organizations like Global Chamber, a network of chambers of commerce in 525 metro areas worldwide, could motivate small-business campaigns. Consumer demand creates market pull. When customers actively choose to support refugee-lens businesses through their purchasing decisions, corporate responsiveness follows. This is a chance for all of us to be part of the solution.
Corporate engagement creates employment pathways and market access at scale in ways capital alone cannot. A single company, like Starbucks, Hilton, or Chobani, committing to refugee hiring affects thousands of people. Supply-chain integration gives refugee entrepreneurs stable customers and revenue, making their businesses more investable. Product adaptation taps refugee purchasing power, which collectively represents a massive, underserved market. Private companies can be powerful forces for integrating the displaced.
5. Mobilize development finance institutions as anchor investors. Group of Seven (G7) countries all have development finance institutions (DFIs) that invest in private-sector development projects, business, and infrastructure in developing countries. They include the USDFC, UK’s British International Investment, France’s Proparco, Germany’s DEG, and Canada’s FinDev. DFIs can catalyze refugee-lens investing at scale in ways other institutions cannot. These and other bilateral and multilateral development finance entities should collectively mobilize an initial $1 billion for refugee-lens investing over three years, starting with a $100 million commitment from the USDFC.
When the USDFC anchored the Kiva Refugee Investment Fund, it signaled to other investors that the opportunity was credible and viable. DFIs invest in geographies and contexts where commercial investors won’t go alone. They already have mandates aligned with refugee economic integration, including displacement response, fragile state investment, and sustainable development. They don’t need new authorization; they need intentionality.
An explicit G7 commitment would create the institutional focus and accountability to move from ad hoc deals to systematic deployment. DFIs should establish dedicated refugee-lens investment mandates within existing portfolios, create coinvestment vehicles that blend DFI capital with private investors, and deploy anchor investments that signal market credibility, just as the USDFC did with Kiva. The G7 challenge creates accountability and momentum. The $1 billion target is ambitious but achievable, given DFIs’ combined balance sheets and existing mandates around fragility, displacement, and economic development. Global advocacy and media partners like Global Citizen, the Global Refugee Forum, the Clinton Global Initiative, and Concordia could all provide powerful platforms to leverage a commitment of this scale against private investment.
Creating a Movement
Our work on massive, forced displacement over the past 15 years has brought us incredible stories of resilience, hope, and beauty. We have also seen the most violent and heartbreaking sides of humanity. As President Obama said in his victory speech after the 2012 election, “Progress isn’t always in a straight line.” Building the refugee investing sector will take time, but our recommendations build on what has already proven to work. Kiva demonstrated how catalytic capital creates data that unlock commercial investment at scale. Acumen showed that impact investors are already making refugee-lens investments. Intentionality makes them scalable and replicable. Massachusetts proved that outcomes-based financing can align municipal, investor, and service-provider incentives around measurable results.
Taken together, these cases and the dozens of other reviewed in our book demonstrate that refugee economic integration is an investable market opportunity constrained only by information asymmetry and misaligned incentives. Both problems are solvable. The models work across domestic and international contexts, in labor-shortage and labor-surplus conditions, with different stakeholder configurations and financing structures. They require intentionality, evidence-based design, and institutional commitment.
The social innovation community faces a rare moment of alignment. We have 120 million forcibly displaced people worldwide. Impact-investing networks control trillions of dollars in assets under management. DFIs have mandates and balance sheets aligned with this work. We have proven models that demonstrate returns, both financial and social. CDFIs, corporations, and foundations are positioned to act.
We must build a movement to support the world’s most vulnerable in the face of careless governments. We must mobilize to elect governments that do better. By taking the reins in our own hands and building economies of belonging, we can transform stories of resilience and hope into sustainable systems of shared prosperity. Each of us has a role to play.
Read more stories by John Kluge Jr. & Christine Mahoney.