INTEGRATED CAPITAL
We hold the core belief that philanthropy needs to move beyond the artificial separation between grantmaking and other financial tools—an arbitrary distinction that limits our work and compromises our values.
Philanthropic organizations have access to multiple financial tools that rarely work together: grants, investments, loan guarantees, low-interest debt, equity investments, and more.
This fragmentation limits what's possible and often forces communities to navigate multiple, disconnected funding streams for comprehensive solutions.
When foundations coordinate these tools strategically, we can address root causes rather than symptoms, building lasting community wealth and resilience that grants alone could never achieve.
By coordinating financial tools, we’ve been able to stand alongside partners through different phases of growth, providing the right type of capital at the right time, sharing risk and responding to needs, rather than imposing predetermined solutions. This integrated approach reduces philanthropic dependency and helps build long-term community resiliency.
Today, this type of work is carried forward by our anchor organization, Orchid Capital Collective, which leverages integrated capital to invest in community-owned ventures that anchor economic development with transformative birth and reproductive care.
IN PRACTICE
Whole Woman’s Health
Putting investments to work differently; not just in our own portfolio, but across the entire ecosystem.
Early on in our journey, Whole Woman’s Health, a vital national abortion provider and grantee partner, won a landmark Supreme Court Case protecting abortion access in the US.
But their victory came at a steep cost: to sustain their clinic operations during the years-long court battle, they had been forced to take on debt with interest rates as high as 25%; a predatory term that would inevitably undermine community health and autonomy.
When we looked together at the problem, we saw how financial systems themselves can serve as barriers to reproductive health and justice. By providing a low-interest loan to their for-profit arm to refinance their debt, plus an unrestricted grant to their nonprofit arm, we were able to help transform an extractive financial relationship into one that built community power and healthcare access; addressing both immediate needs and long-term sustainability. This combination allowed Whole Woman’s Health to maintain their existing clinic, reopen their flagship Austin facility, and redirect millions that would have gone to interest payments toward essential healthcare instead.
