Total Impact Capital is channeling streamlined senior debt capital to high-performing impact funds in emerging markets. We sat down with John Simon at Total Impact Notes to talk about why the fund exists, how it works, and what makes it different.

Quick Facts

• Founding date: 2024
• Fund size: $50M
• Typical investment Size: $500k – $1M

Let’s start at the beginning. Why did Total Impact Capital create the Notes?

It really came out of a pattern we kept seeing play out in emerging markets. High-performing, high-impact debt funds, funds with real track records, kept struggling to access the senior debt capital they needed to grow. And it wasn’t because their performance was weak. It was the opposite problem, honestly: onerous due diligence requirements, and a risk premium attached to emerging markets that was often overstated relative to how these funds were actually performing.

So the Notes were built to solve two problems in one structure. On one side, they give proven impact funds a more streamlined path to capital. On the other hand, they give impact-first investors — people who don’t have the capacity to do fund-level due diligence themselves, a way into a diversified portfolio of high-impact funds across sectors and geographies. For a lot of these investors, it’s their first real entry point into high-impact investing.

How does the fund actually advance gender, climate, and income justice? Is that baked into the structure, or is it more of an outcome?

It’s baked in from day one. Every fund we bring to the portfolio is screened specifically for alignment with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Look at our first four investments, the ones already diligenced and approved by the Investment Committee: every single one has a Gender Equality focus tied to SDG 5. Two are centered on Climate Action under SDG 13. Four address Decent Work and Economic Growth under SDG 8, and our largest investment is focused on SDG 7 – clean energy.

That’s not a coincidence, and it’s not something we’re layering on after the fact to make a nice slide. It’s part of the investment thesis itself. When we channel capital to funds with demonstrated, trackable alignment to these goals, the justice outcomes are structural, not incidental.

Community entrepreneurs in Honduras at an Ilu Women’s Empowerment Program workshop.

What actually sets Total Impact Notes apart from a traditional fixed-income product?

Three things, really.

First, investors get to direct their capital. If someone buying Notes cares most about gender equity, or climate, or economic growth, they can point their investment toward that SDG, and we target our portfolio allocations to match.

Second, the structure itself. The Notes function similarly to a securitization of the underlying impact funds, it’s an efficient pass-through of debt capital from investors directly to the borrowing funds.

Third, it’s designed to be revolving. This isn’t a one-and-done loan. As long as a fund keeps performing, both financially and on impact, it can come back for follow-on capital. We want this to be an ongoing relationship, not a single transaction.

Can you walk us through a real example of this in action?

Sure, Ilu Women’s Empowerment Fund (WEF) is a good one. It’s among the first four investments slated for our first close: a $2.25 million, five-year senior debt loan with a lump-sum repayment at 6% interest.

Ilu WEF is the first gender-lens investment fund in Latin America and the Caribbean. They finance SMEs that advance women’s economic empowerment, everything from financial education to healthcare, clean energy, and sustainable production. By the end of 2022, their portfolio had already supported nearly 700,000 micro-entrepreneurs and SMEs, and had provided financing to more than 526,000 women. That’s exactly the kind of fund we built this vehicle for: proven, at scale, and doing work that matters.

How do you actually measure success here? Is it just about repayment?

No, and that’s an important distinction. Success is measured by whether a fund can take our senior debt capital and use it to grow its impact KPIs over the life of the five-year loan. We’re tying financial performance directly to demonstrate impact growth. Repayment matters, but the real question we’re asking is whether the capital we deployed actually translated into more reach and more benefit for the people these funds ultimately serve.

Every prospective investee is screened first and foremost on the impact it generates for its ultimate beneficiaries — funds have to track their impact KPIs closely and show demonstrated improvement since inception, plus have that localized technical assistance piece in place.