Wilstar is a funder of social entrepreneurs and organisations who look to create sustainable, lasting change. We, therefore, support organisations, which typically have a business model or long-term funding strategy. Consequently, we do not financially support individuals.

Wilstar believes in providing security for our investees and nurturing them to grow to a place where they can create impact at scale without Wilstar financing. Wilstar, therefore, invests in companies at a 3 to 6-year investment horizon to allow our investees to prioritise working for long-term sustained growth, instead of having to worry about short-term survival.

Wilstar does not have a direct application process. We primarily source our investments through our network and through the accelerator programme we finance, Impact StartUp.

We are highly focused on measuring and managing our impact and also support the social entrepreneurs we finance to measure and manage their impact. We measure the impact of all our investees before and during investment, focusing on measuring outcomes to understand the true change created through our support.

We know that being an early-stage social entrepreneur is not easy, and that the founders we support face many challenges. We, therefore, provide capacity building to all our investees in various forms. We provide support on governance structures, impact measurement and management, and financial strategy. Depending on the needs of the Social Entrepreneur, additional support may also include helping to establish a professional board, through being active members of the team, through connecting different social entrepreneurs, and by providing access to a valuable network of supporters and consultants.

We provide financing that is appropriate for the stage of growth of the individual social entrepreneur or organisation, with higher funding amounts typically provided to the ones who are focused on systems change. We believe in the power of partnerships and prefer to invest with other like-minded investors to create even more impact. Typically, we act as lead funders and aim to provide capital that opens the door for other funders to join us.

We mainly support early-stage social entrepreneurs who have a “proof-of-concept”, and there needs to be a potential to create a sustainable business model for the social entrepreneur. Additionally, the social entrepreneurs need to show some impact results, with this impact growing alongside the financial results. Finally, we also focus on supporting entrepreneurs who we believe are capable of growing sustainable organisations that create impact at scale.

Wilstar provides financial support and capacity building to social entrepreneurs and projects that intend to solve prioritised societal and environmental issues with the potential and intention to be self-sustained after an agreed-upon period of time. The organisations and projects we support should have the potential to create profound large-scale impact, with a vision to create real systems change. Wilstar is committed to creating impact within four main focus areas: education, female empowerment, Marine Environment, and Climate Change. These four areas touch upon important societal and environmental issues, where there is a need and potential for innovative solutions to appear and grow.