Social Impact Investing (SII) Consultant at Fred Hollows Foundation

OBJECTIVE AND PURPOSE:

• Our objective is to leverage Social Impact Investing (SII) to help break through barriers to eye health with innovative, bold and creative solutions. We believe that impact funding and other forms of blended finance have a role to play in addressing this enormous challenge and in funding solutions. Therefore, The Foundation is seeking a consultant to help us consolidate our learnings, clarify our SII mandate and plan our next steps.

The Foundation sees the work in a phased approach.

Phase 1: Drafting a Social Impact Investment mandate.

Explore options and draft a Social Impact Investing mandate for The Foundation.

• Analysis of the problems and opportunities by reviewing relevant external and internal materials such as the World Report on Vision, our strategy, our thematic priorities, our fundraising market and country strategies and other relevant documents.
• Review and learn from our experience in impact investing to date.
• Scan the market to understand what SII activities exist related to health, especially eye health. For example, might we be able to leverage existing impact platforms such as GIIN, AVPN or the Global Innovation Fund or would we need to set up our own fund?

Support us to draft our SII mandate including:

• to identify the themes or areas where SII has the most potential, and
• to identify where The Foundation can best add value and help us clarify the role we want to play.

The draft mandate will be reviewed by our Board. This will be the first stage gate in this process before progressing to Phase 1b.

Testing the mandate and exploring the SII pipeline potential.

• Support The Foundation to identify, classify and scope prospective or existing SII opportunities, both funders and investees, in the eye health sector and beyond for use to back test against our draft SII mandate.
• Identify six initiatives and detail out initial commercial feasibility and potential for investment.
• Back test these initiatives against our draft mandate, including our impact focus and role.
• Test our Results and Impact Framework (RIF) to ensure it is both aligned with our SII mandate and sufficient to satisfy our target SII investors.
• Support us to adjust our draft mandate as required, including detail out our financial guardrails e.g. >5% return within 3-5 years, EBIT positive, annual revenue over $05m, etc. to help refine our mandate and ensure it is aligned to our risk appetite and risk tolerances.

Planning our next steps.

• Support us to draft a forward project plan including, skill, resourcing, timeline, budget and KPIs as well as a governance structure, should FHF choose to pursue our SII mandate going forward in Phase 2.
• The updated SII mandate and SII phase 2 plans will be reviewed by the Board to decide if The Foundation should invest in further.

Phase 2 and beyond not in the scope of this consultancy but might include activities such as:

• Developing detailed business plans for selected initiatives
• Pitching business cases to investors
• Brokering investment deals
• Seeding projects
• Providing business development support
• Further SIF investigation
• Implementation of V1.0 operating model to support FHF SII

DELIVERABLES, MILESTONES AND TIMING

• The Foundation requires this consultancy support over the period July – Dec 2024.
• The exact number of days required will be determined as part of detailed planning but is likely to be in the order of on average three days per week over six months.

Preparation Phase

• Milestone 1: Initiation meeting to discuss and finalise project scope, objectives, inputs, approach and deliverables.
• Milestone 2: Finalisation of contract.

Phase 1a

• Milestones 3: Review of documents & interviews with stakeholders Related to problem analysis completed.
• Milestone 4: Report on SII activities related to health completed.
• Milestone 5: Recommended SII Mandate completed.
• Milestone 6: Workshop with internal stakeholders held for alignment, Mid -August
• Milestone 7: Workshop held with FHF Board as first stage gate - September

Phase 1b

• Milestone 8: Identification of approximately six initiatives and commercia feasibility and potential for investment completed. Testing of these initiatives with our draft mandated tested.
• Milestone 9: Testing of RIF for alignment with both our SII mandate and to sufficient for target SII investors
• Milestone 10: Detailed financial guardrails developed. Mandate refined to align with risk appetite and risk tolerances.

Phase 1c

• Milestone11: Draft project plan (resourcing, timeline, budget, governance structure and KPIS) developed.

SELECTION CRITERIA

The Foundation is looking for a consultant or consulting team that have the following skills and experiences:

• Experience in designing, implementing and evaluating projects in developing countries.
• Previous experience in SI projects and SII.
• Ability to conduct informant interviews and workshops.
• Ability to interview business owners and understand business processes.
• Ability to draw up the commercial aspects of a project/business.
• Experience in creating business plans.
• Exposure to the eye health sector desirable.
• Strong knowledge of the SII world of products and investors.
• Track record of consultancies.
• Experience in working cross culturally.