Prime is expanding our catalytic capital platform.
Catalytic capital is investment that accepts disproportionate risk and/or concessionary returns to generate positive impact and enable third-party investment that wouldn't otherwise occur.
- “Catalytic Capital,” Tideline, 2019
Explore Prime’s glossary to learn more about catalytic capital and find additional resources.
Catalytic investing with charitable capital holds immense potential to address our global climate emergency at scale and with speed.
Yet, structural challenges for philanthropists and fund managers alike are preventing its deployment. Nonprofit intermediation can meaningfully lower barriers on both sides, unblocking the deployment of charitable capital into critical, market-driven climate solutions.
Since 2015, Prime has closed $90.8MM of catalytic capital through its nonprofit form, mobilized $312MM into Prime-built investment opportunities, and unlocked over $2.2B in external funding for Prime holdings.
In 2025, we piloted a partnership with catalytic fund managers from outside of Prime. Our nonprofit team anchors this expansion in our deep philanthropy expertise, evidence-based impact discipline, and experimental risk tolerance, as well as our core values of tenacity, humility, and care.
Prime’s expanded platform will be in quiet market testing in 2026.
Prime has extensive experience co-creating Prime-Built catalytic investing programs in response to acute and unmet capital gaps in climate finance from 2014-2025. In 2025, we expanded our platform to include Prime-Facilitated funds that meet our eligibility criteria and provide philanthropists with an easy nonprofit pathway to support those opportunities with grants or recoverable grants.
As with all of Prime’s catalytic investing programs, we aggregate charitable capital from many different types of philanthropists —donor advised funds, private foundations, family offices, corporate giving programs — and use aggregated commitments to make investments into eligible catalytic investment vehicles. By the end of 2025, we will have channeled $76.5MM into Prime-built catalytic funds and $21.8MM into Prime-facilitated catalytic funds.
We’re working hard to expand our internal capital orchestration capacity to begin market testing a curated platform in 2026. Prime-Curated funds will be sourced by Prime to achieve our impact priorities based on in-house systems research addressing the highest and best uses of catalytic capital.
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Prime has developed a set of Eligibility Criteria to guide our investment decision-making during the pilot phase (Jan 2025 - Sep 2025) and market-testing phase (Oct 2025 - Jun 2026+) to ensure that all of Prime’s catalytic investments are aligned with our mission. Every Prime-Facilitated opportunity must satisfy four key criteria demonstrating that it will drive meaningful impact and leverage charitable capital to address critical capital gaps, exhibit strong processes for impact governance and risk, and be supported by a highly capable manager.
Download our Eligibility Criteria table to learn more (page 2).
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How do we ensure all investments align with our mission? Prime partners with investment managers in a collaborative diligence process that centers on the impact-first mission and governance of the opportunity. Prime’s Fund Advisory Committee, a sub-committee of Prime’s nonprofit board, must then vote to approve that each opportunity meets the minimum standard required for qualified recipients.
Upon approval, Prime will coordinate with the manager and with interested philanthropists to aggregate catalytic capital commitments for the opportunity. At the manager’s request, Prime also offers training on topics like catalytic capital fundraising, impact-prioritizing governance, and impact-prioritizing fund formation. -
Prime’s solution will lower barriers for philanthropists to support Prime-Facilitated catalytic investment opportunities with two simple options:
Download our Philanthropists’ Options to Participate table to learn more (page 3).A one-time core support fee is added to the philanthropist’s commitment amount. This fee supports Prime’s costs, including the assessment and approval of opportunities, structuring of the investment, impact reporting for the full fund life cycle, and financial accounting and compliance.
Interested in Prime’s expanded platform?
Email Claudia Leon, Assistant Director, Impact, at claudia.leon@primecoalition.org to learn more.
