Strategic Investments

Pioneering a capital-efficient approach to philanthropy

We think about grants and investments as a continuum rather than a binary

Most foundations have an external grant-making function. At Astera, we also do grants when appropriate, but we believe we can increase philanthropic capital efficiency by structuring some of our programmatic expenditures as investments. With a grant, we lose 100% of our capital 100% of the time—with investments, sometimes we return capital that we can then redeploy for philanthropic purposes.

For-profit companies are a major vector for social and technological change, and a tool that nonprofits can use to achieve their charitable objectives. By removing the artificial constraints most foundations erect internally between grant-making and investment functions, we hope to make our existing philanthropic dollars go farther.