Portfolio
Impact Multiplier
We meet the demands of complex challenges with creativity, a high tolerance for risk, a willingness to be catalytic with capital, and an emphasis on developing the next generation.
Our endowment is 100% mission-aligned, from the program work we perform alongside amazing partners to direct investments, alternatives, and public equities. We work to find and fund solutions that help more people thrive.
projects and companies we are proud to be a part of
Donate Equity
Donate Equity makes complex giving simple. Its software platform and expert team help nonprofits receive early-stage equity gifts from donors — founders, small-business owners, and early employees who want to give a slice of what they're building long before any sale. We are investors in Donate Equity, and our own AV Foundation has been an early user of the platform.
Growth Loan Fund
The Growth Loan was a non-collateralized loan of up to $35,000 for small-business owners who can't access capital through traditional underwriting. We designed and built it to fill a gap our other work kept surfacing: talented entrepreneurs being turned away not because they wouldn't repay, but because they didn't fit a credit-score box. More than a product, the Growth Loan was a conversation where borrowers speak directly to the loan committee, and confidence in the person carries real weight.
Shelby Park - Louisville, KY
Shelby Park is where Access Ventures began. A small Louisville neighborhood built by German and Irish immigrants around an Olmsted-designed park, it thrived for the first half of the twentieth century and then, like so many American neighborhoods, hollowed out and losing residents and businesses to the suburbs and the interstate, and gaining vacancy, disinvestment, and crime in their place. By the time we began in the spring of 2014, roughly 83% of residents rented, median household income was about 60% below the national figure, and three of every five renters were cost-burdened.
Fortress
Fortress Investment Group is a pioneer and leader in alternative assets, managing capital across credit, real estate, and private equity for some of the world's largest and most sophisticated investors. We invest through Fortress's real estate credit strategy (the Fortress Credit Realty Income Trust) as part of the disciplined, income-oriented core of our portfolio.
AV Foundation
The AV Foundation is a donor's partner for impact, a public charity that helps people realize their philanthropic aspirations while fostering a sense of community around every challenge. We started it with friends, and we continue to support its vision and its growth. The team at Access Ventures provides management support to the Foundation and its donor-advised fund accounts.
Kyndly
Kyndly is a health benefits technology company that makes it easy to offer an ICHRA, the Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangement. Instead of a one-size-fits-all group plan, an ICHRA lets an employer give workers tax-advantaged dollars to choose the individual health plan that fits their life. Kyndly provides the turnkey, white-label platform that benefits administrators, FMOs, and general agencies use to deliver it at scale. Kyndly first came to us through our Reconstruct Challenge, where it won a Phase 1 grant, and we followed with a Phase 2 investment.
Clear Frontier
ClearFrontier Ag Management (CFAM) is a leading organic farmland investment manager driving measurable impact through the transition of conventional U.S. farmland to Certified USDA Organic. We are an investor in ClearFrontier's Meadowlark Lands Fund, part of our real assets allocation and capital that stewards the land while pursuing durable returns.
Vision Ridge Partners
Vision Ridge Partners is a leading sustainable real assets investor that seeks to capitalize on the global transition to sustainability by investing in complex, tangible assets across energy, transportation, and agriculture to drive positive environmental impact while delivering strong financial returns. We are an investor in Vision Ridge as part of our real assets allocation.
Reconstruct Challenge
KNOW Homelessness
For many of us, homelessness feels like a problem that is too big, too complicated to address. We wanted to break through that fatigue with human connection, with attention, and with information We found that the common understandings and representations of homeless communities are incomplete.
The goal was to start a conversation.
Render Capital
Samaritan
Samaritan is a mobile-first community built to support people experiencing homelessness designed with the input of people who've been homeless, social workers, developers, and experts in Medicaid and emergency healthcare. Its premise is simple and human: walk with, not by. Samaritan lets people learn the stories of the neighbors they pass every day, fund critical needs, and help create lifelines of hope linking individuals without a home to the social and financial capital they need to meet real housing and health goals.
Leap Fund
Leap Fund takes on the benefits cliff, also called the cliff effect: the moment a worker earns a dollar or two more an hour and, as a result, loses public benefits worth far more than the raise. People end up earning more and netting less. Leap Fund builds the tools, education, and data to expose these cliffs and help people make informed decisions, while pushing for the policy changes that would end them. Leap Fund came to us through the Reconstruct Challenge, winning our 2022 Employment challenge with a Phase 1 and a Phase 2 grant.
Hot Chicken Takeover
Hot Chicken Takeover (HCT) was a Nashville-style hot chicken restaurant founded in Columbus, Ohio, in 2014 by Joe DeLoss and was one of the country's most compelling examples of "fair-chance" employment. We were early investors in HCT, and we exited our position before the founder departed and sold the business. The company has since closed, but the model it demonstrated remains one we're proud to have backed.
Catchafire
Catchafire is a capacity-building platform that helps foundations and corporations go beyond the grant by delivering nonprofits the coaching, technical assistance, and skilled volunteers they need to grow stronger and work smarter. We are investors in Catchafire, and we remain invested today.
Haven Connect
Haven Connect builds software for affordable housing. It gives property managers tools to manage applications and waitlists, and it streamlines the application process for the people trying to find a home. Haven Connect came to us through our Reconstruct Challenge, where it won a Phase 1 grant, and we followed with a Phase 2 investment.
AV Blockchain
Collab Capital
Collab Capital invests financial, human, and social capital to grow businesses and build lasting economic equity through increased ownership in the innovation economy. Founded by entrepreneurs Jewel Burks Solomon and Barry Givens who built the firm they wished they'd had, Collab is "built by founders, for founders." We are a limited partner in Collab Capital.
Blueprint Local
Access Ventures was a founding member of the collaboration that launched Blueprint Local which is a platform built to help entrepreneurs and communities access capital in the places they call home. What began as a neighborhood experiment on our own street in Louisville grew into one of the country's leading place-based investment platforms.
Village Capital
Village Capital is a global venture capital firm that has pioneered peer-selected investment and entrepreneur support models to back founders solving real-world challenges in sectors such as financial inclusion, sustainability, and the future of work.