Episode summary
The Biggest Untapped Impact Money Pool You’ve Never Heard Of
Swimming With Allocators
· · 44 min · Hosts: Alexa Binns, Earnest Sweat · Guests: Thomas Knowles, Shane Goudey
Summary
The guest argues that impact investing has moved from a niche, KPI-heavy exercise into a more mature approach that integrates products, governance, and operations. He says Gratitude Ventures was built around a community of 150 family offices that want mission-driven businesses, and that the firm’s model combines fund-of-funds investing, direct deals, co-investments, and secondaries to meet those goals.
A major theme is how the firm screens for alignment. Rather than forcing every opportunity into a narrow impact checklist, the guest says Gratitude underwrites the founder or manager’s ethos, then looks for profitable businesses delivering climate, health care, education, or financial inclusion outcomes. He also says the community is intentionally selective and action-oriented, with growth driven by referrals rather than scale for its own sake.
The conversation also covers where capital is flowing and where it is not. The guest highlights a yield vehicle for small commercial solar and storage as a good fit for family offices, says nature-based solutions still lack enough product structure and risk-return clarity, and argues AI is improving the economics of social-impact businesses while driving more energy demand. He also says donor-advised funds remain a huge but underused pool for impact capital.
On the allocation side, he says Gratitude invests about $500,000 to $1 million in early-stage rounds of $3 million to $10 million, and about $500,000 to a few million into managers. He expects emerging managers to become more attractive again as large venture firms stay capacity constrained and investors seek consistent exposure to the asset class.
Key takeaways
- The guest says Gratitude Ventures invests through fund-of-funds, direct, co-invest, and secondaries rather than relying on a single venture fund structure.
- He says the firm’s sweet spot in seed and Series A is about $500,000 to $1 million in rounds of $3 million to $10 million.
- He says a small-commercial-solar yield vehicle fit both investor demand for lower-risk income and a financing gap in the market.
- He says nature-based solutions still need clearer products and risk-return profiles before they can absorb more institutional capital.
- He says AI is improving unit economics for education and health care businesses by embedding automation into service-heavy models.
- He expects emerging managers to regain momentum as investors want persistent venture exposure and large funds remain capacity constrained.
Notable quotes
“we think about it as really being integrated across all aspects of the capital markets and and how you think about running a business”
“we want to identify those best GPS and founders that are building profitable, economically viable and impactful solutions across different issue areas”
“we ended up putting together a a yield co focused on investing in small commercial solar and storage products”
“our view today is that the ecosystem around the investment opportunities is still emerging and and pretty nent”
How the episode opens
Welcome to Swinging with Alligators, — The VC podcast from the LP perspective with your hosts Alexa Bins — And Ernest. You ready? Let's dive in. Welcome to the show. Today we have Thomas Nolles, managing partner and co-CEO of Gratitude Ventures. This includes a network of 150 family offices, all working with him as a community of investors focused on missiondriven businesses. Um he's the investment manager working on behalf of all of these families. Thomas, we're so eager to hear your perspective. Thank you.
Thanks for having me. — Um you didn't start at Grat Gratitude Ventures. This is um the latest iteration of your life. You can you walk us through sort of like your LP journey and your direct investing journey?
Sure. Absolutely. Yeah.
So the connection to gratitude started in undergraduate. I studied economics and got exposed to micro finance when it was really becoming a mainstream tool in the mid200s and thought it was such an impressive way to use the capital markets to drive social mobility. uh but at that time it was really done in the nonprofit sector and coming out of school I wanted to go earn some uh high income and then maybe come back to impact down the road and so started my career actually in the asset management arm of Silicon Valley Bank SUV Capital uh got the experience of being there through the financial crisis uh in 2007208 and at the time when I joined we had about a dozen investment professionals uh grew to you know multiples of that and then back down to a small team.
So just that experience continues to be part of my career today. Uh and then went and got some operating experience. So worked for two technology companies uh doing corporate development.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- impact investing evolution
- family offices
- fund-of-funds and co-invests
- nature-based solutions
- donor-advised funds
Companies and tickers mentioned
- Gratitude Ventures
- SVB Capital
- Sidley Austin LLP
- Sidley
Watch the episode
Watch “The Biggest Untapped Impact Money Pool You’ve Never Heard Of” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
More from Swimming With Allocators
Swimming With Allocators, this episode and its artwork belong to Earnest Sweat, Alexa Binns. Octagon is not affiliated with the show; this page is an independent summary.
