Impact Investing

What is Impact Investing?

Social Impact Investing focuses on helping businesses produce positive measurable results, both socially and financially, through capital lending. Rather than targeting maximizing returns, impact investors aim to generate positive financial returns as well as achieve social and/or environmental impact.

UP Community Fund is committed to supporting and investing in entrepreneurs of color. We promote social justice by empowering small minority-owned business with the capital and resources they need to grow. We realize that entrepreneurs of color are essential to our economy.

Economic disparity and discrimination have impacted people of color for decades. UP Community Fund is about changing that paradigm. Minority-owned businesses have long been pillars of communities. It matters more than ever that minority businesses thrive in today’s climate. UP Community Fund is here to make sure they do.

UP Community Fund’s Position: The Need for Social Justice

According to the U.S. Minority Business Development Agency, the country’s 8 million minority-owned firms contributed $1.4 trillion in revenue and 7.2 million jobs to the economy in 2012. While this is significant, it is only a third of the revenue and employment that minority businesses could represent if there were successful entrepreneurship parity between communities of color and majority communities. From a social justice perspective, the UP Community Fund seeks to provide flexible financing and technical assistance resources to empower business owners, employees, and communities of color to achieve parity.