Back to origins

Finance that generates profits while staying connected to the real world

It may be time to return to a forgotten truth: originally, finance was not meant to float above the world. It was made to irrigate the real economy, to enable useful activities to be born, to grow, to produce, to employ, to repair, to pass on. It was a means. Not a separate universe.

Yet, for several decades, a growing share of financial flows has moved away from the field, from concrete needs, from human timeframes, from projects led by women and men who are building something tangible. This disconnection has produced a great deal of sophistication, but not always much meaning. It has also created a paradox that has become central: there is a huge amount of capital available, and yet a multitude of solid, useful, profitable, and necessary projects still struggle to find the right financing. This is precisely the diagnosis set out in the White Book of the Geneva Foundation for the Future, which describes the coexistence of excess capital and a deficit of financed solutions, as well as a lack of common interfaces between investors, philanthropists, and project leaders.

Returning to the origins therefore does not mean going backward. It means rediscovering the primary vocation of money: to support what has value in the real world, while generating income for those who commit it.

This idea is now attracting very different profiles. Long-established wealthy families seeking to pass on something other than financial assets. More recent, entrepreneurial fortunes that want their capital to keep building. Banks, funds, family offices, foundations, companies, individual investors. More modest wealth as well, because they too want to grow their money without feeling that they are feeding an abstract or destructive mechanism.

The good news is that this reconnection between profit and reality is no longer a marginal intuition. The global impact investing market is estimated at 1.571 trillion dollars in assets under management in 2024, with strong growth since 2019, and the GIIN explicitly reminds us that impact investments can target returns ranging from below market to above market, depending on the investor’s intention and strategy.

In other words: yes, it is possible to seek a ROI for oneself while financing projects connected to the field.

Making money “with,” no longer “against”

For a long time, an implicit opposition structured people’s thinking: on one side profitability, on the other usefulness. On one side return, on the other ethics. On one side performance, on the other impact.

This opposition is holding up less and less.

Why? Because the major risks of the 21st century are no longer peripheral. They are at the heart of the economy. Climate, resource scarcity, the fragility of supply chains, social tensions, public distrust, regulatory change: all of this ends up affecting profitability itself. Projects that integrate these realities from the outset are not outside the market; they are often better suited to the world that is coming. Looking risks in the face and integrating them into the business model already means turning them into drivers of value and resilience.

Finance connected to the real world therefore does not mean sacrificing financial return. It means producing a financial return rooted in concrete usefulness, in tangible assets, in necessary services, in business models that respond to real needs.
It is also, quite simply, a question of readability. When an investor understands what their money is actually doing, whom it serves, through what flows it returns, with what risks and what governance, they recover an intelligence of investment that growing complexity has sometimes blurred.

Another promise made to the investor: understandable income

One of the major contributions of the approach defended by the Geneva Foundation for the Future is to place at the center a finance directly connected to the field, with an explicit desire to bypass as much as possible opaque layers of intermediation and overly abstract instruments. The foundation’s brochure speaks of a finance “directly connected to the field,” of a desire to “re-enchant finance without derivatives,” and the official White Book even states: “We believe in reconnecting finance to real initiatives, bypassing financial derivatives and complex intermediation to ensure full transparency and tangible outcomes.”

This orientation changes many things for the investor.

First, it changes their relationship to risk. A risk is not necessarily lower because it is more sophisticated. On the contrary, it may become less readable. Conversely, a well-structured, well-governed, well-phased field project, with identified revenues, traceable costs, and simple indicators, can offer a more concrete reading of the risk-return ratio.

It then changes their relationship to time. Not all investors seek the same timeframe. Some want to grow capital over ten years. Others seek quarterly flows. Still others want to be able to start small, without devoting much time to it, without entering into an overly demanding adventure, but with the satisfaction that their money is feeding a useful economy.

This is precisely where the “back to origins” approach becomes powerful: it does not ask everyone to become a field expert. It offers simple entry modes, gradual, not very time-consuming, but connected to real projects.

The real issue is not only impact. It is the circulation of money

One of the central problems is less the absence of capital than the poor circulation of that capital. There are many relatively recurring obstacles: a mismatch between the timeframe of capital and that of projects, fragmentation of financing channels, absence of refinancing mechanisms, unsuitable allocation criteria, withdrawal of funders in the face of perceived risk, and weakened monitoring when liquidity is lacking.

The AGILE White Book addresses this problem in its various chapters on this excess capital facing a large number of very good unfunded projects, on the flows to unlock for scaling up, and on the fracture between local projects and globalized finance.
This analysis aligns with a broader observation: UNCTAD estimates that the annual investment gap to achieve the SDGs in developing countries is around 4 trillion dollars per year, while the decline in international project financing and sustainable investment is aggravating this tension.

The issue therefore becomes very concrete: how can money be made to circulate more directly, more intelligently, more quickly, toward truly useful projects, while enabling investors to obtain the income they are seeking?

ROI for oneself is not taboo

It must be said clearly here: wanting a return for oneself is not a problem. It is even healthy, provided one is clear-eyed about what one is financing to obtain it.
A bank needs profitability. A fund must serve its subscribers. A company must allocate its capital with discipline. An individual wants to grow their savings. An institution seeks to secure and enhance its assets. None of this is contradictory to a connection with the real world.

What changes is the type of return one agrees to look at.

First, there is purely financial return. It matters, of course, and today impact projects and mission-driven companies are capable of delivering very good financial returns on investment. Then there is the stability created by more resilient models. There is also avoided risk. There is the quality of territorial anchoring. There is reputation, compliance, social acceptability, access to new markets, the loyalty of communities of clients or partners. Many of these dimensions end up translating into economic performance, even if they do not all appear immediately in a spreadsheet.

The GIIN also reminds us that impact investing is compatible with a wide range of financial objectives, and that investors are involved in very concrete sectors: energy, health, sustainable agriculture, infrastructure, housing, microfinance.
True maturity therefore consists in embracing a simple idea: seeking ROI and seeking real usefulness can now go together.

All forms of wealth are concerned

It would be wrong to believe that this transformation concerns only a few major international players.

It concerns:

• small fortunes that want to begin with modest but visible tickets;
• established families that wish to pass on capital more consistent with their vision of the world;
• new fortunes resulting from recent wealth transfers, which quite rightly seek to give meaning to their new financial capacities;
• entrepreneurs who have recently become wealthy, who prefer to invest in dynamics they understand;
• banks and managers seeking more credible and better-justified offerings;
• companies that want to transform cash reserves, a foundation, an investment vehicle, or a diversification strategy;
• individual investors who have neither the time nor the desire to become experts, but who want their money to serve something real.

There is a new generation of very diverse investors: individuals, family offices, public or philanthropic institutions, all interested in different return horizons and in a more direct relationship with the field.

This point must be emphasized: there is no single culture of wealth. Some fortunes are cautious, patrimonial, discreet. Others are aggressive, entrepreneurial, opportunistic. Some are inherited, others are earned in a single generation. Some seek transmission first, others growth, and still others moral consistency. A finance reconnected to the real world can speak to all of them, because it does not ask them to adopt a single philosophy; it offers them the chance to rediscover a readable link between capital, activity, and result.

How to do it without it becoming time-consuming

This is often where everything is decided. Many investors are interested in theory, then step back in practice because they imagine an involvement that is too heavy, too technical, too uncertain.

Yet there are simple, not very demanding ways of feeding an economy connected to field projects.

The first consists in investing in vehicles or portfolios already structured around real projects, with an evaluation methodology and pooled monitoring. The investor is not asked to analyze everything by themselves. They benefit from a selection framework, governance filters, a reading of risk, and light but serious monitoring.
The second consists in favoring phased projects, broken down into successive sub-projects. Your working document insists strongly on this point: a large project does not need to be financed as a single block; it can be structured into economically viable stages, each with its needs, revenues, milestones, and possible returns. This makes it possible to diversify entry points, obtain gradual returns, and reinvest as progress is made.

The third consists in accepting the plurality of timeframes. Not all returns have to arrive in ten years. Some projects can generate shorter-term flows: monthly, quarterly, or within a three- to five-year horizon. Others require more patience. Your notes specifically mention this multi-temporality and the idea of adapting instruments to the real rhythms of projects.

The fourth consists in entering through simple and understandable forms of financing: straightforward debt, revenue sharing, financing backed by phases of activity, small-scale impact bonds, revolving funds, micro-leasing, or hybrid vehicles when justified. When the structure remains readable, the investor does not need to devote excessive energy to it.

The fifth consists in relying on a translation body between worlds. This is exactly the role that the Geneva Foundation for the Future assigns to its operational center and to the AGILE tool: creating a bridge between financiers, philanthropists, institutions, and project leaders, streamlining evaluation, pooling criteria, simplifying dialogue.

Simple can be more serious than complicated

There is a very strong temptation in the financial world to confuse sophistication with solidity.

Yet, very often, robustness comes from elsewhere: from a clear intention, reliable governance, an understandable economic model, a capacity to actually produce, an anchoring in lasting needs.

That is why the AGILE tool is interesting. In its official reference version, it is based on five families of criteria: Alignment, Governance, Intention, Leadership, Efficiency. It is a common grammar for identifying, evaluating, supporting, and growing impact initiatives.

This amounts to examining five very concrete things:

• Alignment: is the project consistent with values, local needs, reference frameworks, and the reality of the field?
• Governance: who decides, how, with what transparency, what responsibility, and what capacity for adaptation?
• Intention: is the project truly seeking to create native positive impact, or merely dressing up an unchanged model?
• Leadership: do the people leading the initiative have the vision, credibility, and capacity to mobilize others around them?
• Efficiency: are resources used with frugality, intelligence, and economic viability?

This logic also aligns with international impact management standards. The Operating Principles for Impact Management, supported by the IFC and now widely adopted by investors, are specifically aimed at integrating impact throughout the entire investment cycle, from design to monitoring.

In other words, simplicity is not amateurism. Simplicity can be a higher form of rigor.

Disintermediate without disorganizing

Speaking of finance connected to the real world does not mean eliminating all intermediation. It means eliminating unnecessary or opaque intermediation, or intermediation that creates distance.

Analytical skills are needed. Monitoring, compliance, and structuring are needed, but it is not necessary to add layers that move money ever further away from what it is actually financing.

The right intermediary is the one that brings closer, clarifies, secures, makes visible. Not the one that dilutes understanding.

That is why blended finance or hybrid structuring approaches can be useful, provided they remain faithful to their purpose. The OECD reminds us that blended finance must be anchored in a development logic, mobilize private capital in an additional way, be adapted to the local context, and rely on partnerships based on trust and transparency.

In simpler terms: the right structure is the one that helps a real project cross a threshold, not the one that complicates investment to the point of making its purpose forgotten.

What each type of investor can do

For an individual investor, the simplest path often consists in entering through a pooled vehicle, or through clearly structured and already supported projects, with an explicit return horizon and light reporting. No need to be omnipresent; above all, one must be able to understand.

For a bank, the challenge is to build or attach itself to a credible offering: investment products linked to real impact assets, co-financing, dedicated lines, risk-sharing mechanisms, services for clients who now demand meaning without giving up return.

For a fund, the priority is to strengthen the quality of sourcing, evaluation, and monitoring, while avoiding both greenwashing and poorly designed idealism. This is precisely where a common grammar such as AGILE can reduce friction costs and improve mutual understanding.

For a company, it may involve directing part of its cash reserves, foundation, innovation investments, or diversification strategy toward projects connected to its territories, value chains, or transformation challenges.

For a philanthropic institution, the question is no longer only to give, but also to invest part of the balance sheet in a way that is consistent with its mission. Your reference documents in fact insist on this evolution: philanthropy tends to move closer to investment for the future, in a more strategic, measurable, and systemic logic.

For a family office, reconnecting to the real world is often a way of bringing together several objectives in a single movement: preserving, growing, passing on, giving meaning, staying close to reality.

Finance that is closer is not naive finance

This is not about romanticizing field projects. Not all of them are solid. Not all are financeable. Not all generate a return. Not all are well governed.

That is precisely why evaluation matters.

The AGILE tool approach of Impact Finance does not seek to idealize the field but to make it readable, comparable, credible, and supportable. It is designed to identify, evaluate, monitor, coach, accelerate, and then assess projects, with a logic of monitoring and progression.

A finance reconnected to the real world is therefore not a “kind” finance. It is a finance that is more demanding about what matters: the reality of the need, the quality of the model, the consistency of the intention, the reliability of governance, the possibility of income.

Returning to the origin may mean rediscovering the future

At bottom, the choice of a “Back to origins” says something very current.

It is not about rejecting finance. It is about putting it back in its proper place and restoring its nobility. About once again making investment an act of discernment and an economic, social, and environmental driver. About reconnecting money to projects that produce something visible. About acknowledging that one can seek a return for oneself while strengthening an economy that repairs, heals, feeds, trains, relocalizes, transforms.

That may be the most important shift: no longer asking the investor to choose between personal interest and the general interest. Instead, offering them

mechanisms where the two converge.

The Geneva Foundation for the Future expresses this ambition very simply: to create a bridge between siloed worlds, to make the links between finance, philanthropy, and field projects more fluid, and to put investment back in the service of a resilient and regenerative economy.

From this perspective, generating profit while staying connected to the real world is not a moral concession made to finance. It may be its healthiest, most readable, and ultimately most robust form.

Because finance that understands what it is financing also better understands where its return will come from.

And because capital that nourishes real life often ends up creating more lasting value than capital that circulates only among abstractions.