A pioneer and innovator in impact finance, RSF is an impact-first financial services organization that has been working to revolutionize the meaning of money since 1984. By connecting and nurturing a living system of changemakers that includes investors, donors, and social enterprise leaders, RSF mobilizes money toward positive change that has real-world impacts today, tomorrow, and into the future.
RSF envisions a world where all people have the power to use their money to regenerate people, communities, and the planet. “Our theory of change is that RSF connects impact investors’ capital with entrepreneurs and nonprofits that are helping solve the world’s biggest problems,” says RSF CEO Jasper J. van Brakel. “We do this through interdependency and collaboration, in a way that ultimately changes how people look at money, shifting resources from an extractive to a regenerative economy.”
RSF offers investment notes, donor-advised funds, and loans to mission-driven organizations, empowering individuals and organizations to use their money to help build the world they hope to leave for the next generation.
In this Q&A, Jasper shares what it means for money to become a tool of regeneration, the key lessons RSF has learned in its 40+ years, and how the regenerative finance community can work together to change the narrative on the role of money in society.
RSF focuses on connecting investor dollars to community-driven social enterprises. Why is making this connection one of the most effective ways to address the world’s most pressing issues?
Communities around the globe are facing systemic problems such as extreme wealth disparity, low food quality, homelessness, climate change, and more. That means somehow our collective behavior as humans is generating outcomes nobody wants. At RSF, we offer people a way to contribute to creating a better world. It’s all about agency.
People say, “I see what the problems are, but what can I do?” Well, we can all do a little bit by figuring out how the money we already have can play an active role in creating a better world. Every investment has an impact on the world beyond its financial returns. So what impact do we want our money to have on our behalf? What if we could make it do what we want it to do? This isn’t a belief or theory. We have proof that it works.
Right. RSF is founded on the belief that money is a tool for regeneration. What does that mean to you?
Regeneration means more than doing no harm. That’s sustainability. Regeneration is actively making things better—or healing. Regeneration means looking at the economy, the financial system, companies, and organizations as living systems, and applying those principles to the kind of change we seek. It’s interesting what you discover when you start applying principles of living systems to investing and money. For example, we say things like “money flows.” That’s like water. So why are we thinking about accumulation as the goal if we’re talking about water, and the living principle of water is about it flowing?
I also like to think about centering collaboration and partnership as the organizing principle of the regenerative economy. Within a community, the power of collaboration and partnership can really shine—between a supplier, a manufacturer, a retailer, and a customer. They become visible to one another and connect together, rather than competing and extracting from each other.
As a frontrunner in the idea of regenerative finance, RSF has decades of experience to share. What are the key lessons your organization has learned from its work over the years?
In our experience over the past 40+ years, three key lessons stand out.
First, the secret ingredient to our stellar track record is understanding the importance of staying close to both our borrowers and investors. On the borrower side, when you deeply understand somebody’s business model and how it works, you unpack its complexity. It’s not just to be kind and say “we’re interested in what you do”—it helps you understand where the credit risks are and figure out how to not lose money. We want to be the partner a borrower calls first when they need support. This has helped us maintain high repayment rates from borrowers in industries many conventional banks view erroneously as high-risk; it has also led to incredible longevity and stickiness of our investor clients.
Second, a huge element of our success has been in making the interdependence between investors in our fund, borrowers who borrow out of the fund, and RSF as the intermediary tangible, visible, and personal. We’ve been intentionally bringing these stakeholders together for a long time. When borrowers and investors meet, the investors go, “Oh, now I really have a sense of the people behind these organizations and what my money with RSF is doing on my behalf.” On the flip side, borrowers are so grateful and say, “Now I understand that this individual person put $10,000 in an RSF fund, and it’s money they’ll need for their retirement. So I better make sure I repay this.” That’s been huge.
And finally, ground yourself in what you’re good at. It’s kind of a no-brainer, but when you are an innovator and pioneer, there is a temptation to do a lot of new things. The innovations that build on the things we’re already really good at are the ones that stick. It’s tempting to go beyond the borders of what we know because we see the needs, but it’s just not successful. Our success is in focusing on what we’re uniquely good at.
So how do you identify your focus areas, given that wide range of competing needs?
We keep our ear to the ground in all kinds of communities—from thought leaders and think tanks to our community borrowers on the ground—to understand what’s brewing, what’s next, and where the needs are.
One area we’re interested in is the ownership economy. If we want a different type of capitalism—or an altogether different economic system—what matters most is who owns resources, who determines where they go, and who benefits. Back in 2018, we decided to figure out a way to fund conversions of companies embracing innovation in alternative ownership models. So we partner with folks and work with thought leaders to design ways that senior secured lending—which is what we do—can be really helpful in this space.
Another area of interest is regenerative agriculture. There’s a whole movement around certified regenerative organic food, beverages, farms, and produce. This is a system that checks the boxes on community-centered human health and planetary health. In those conversations, I’m asking, “What is needed and how can we best support it?” I’m not there in that moment to write a term sheet for a loan. I’m there to help brainstorm: How do we go after this?
How has the impact finance space evolved over the last 40 years, and how has RSF evolved alongside it?
Back in 1984, the assumption was—and in some spaces still is—that impact isn’t investable. It’s seen as nice but philanthropic. RSF has proven otherwise—and of course, we’re not the only ones doing so. We’ve helped prove that people are hungry for opportunities to invest in ways that align their money with their values.
We provide people with the opportunity to control where their money goes, to direct it to causes they care about while still earning a financial return. Now, the market has caught up. At some point, impact investing became the thing and we evolved how we talk about our work—but the commitment, understanding, and offering haven’t changed.
In terms of evolution, of course, we’ve professionalized as we’ve grown over time. The regulatory environment has changed, and today you need to be far more buttoned up than in the 1980s. We’ve also evolved the issue areas we focus on in alignment with the evolution of how money can be most regenerative, given where we are as a society. We ask ourselves what issue areas and industries are most pressing today and where the needs are greatest. Today and into the future, we’re focused on climate, clean and alternative energy, recycling, food and agriculture, and communities.
Related to knowing where you can have the most impact, you recently worked with the Sorenson Impact Institute at the University of Utah on an impact measurement project. Why did you embark on this project and what were the results?
This was a really rewarding project that helped us solidify our mission—“change finance, finance change”—which describes our theory of change: We’re changing the financial system by funding changemakers in innovative ways.
Making that tangible and measurable is key. Despite the best intentions, the impact finance industry has delivered a mixed bag of results over the last decade. It looks like, across the board, we’re going to miss every single one of the 17 UN SDGs—that’s not a great report card. How do we change that as a system?
We have a very ambitious growth strategy for the next five years. In the financial industry, where a lot of people don’t really know if their money is doing what they’re told, it’s critical for us to have impact reporting with clear KPIs and measurable outcomes. The Sorensen Institute is helping us in every issue area we defined: How do we measure progress, and what can actually be measured reasonably? The Sorenson Impact Institute partnership helped us move from outputs (how much money we’re getting out the door) to outcomes (what is that money accomplishing). We’re pleased to be able to dig one layer deeper on the impacts of our financing, and look forward to presenting that deeper impact data in 2026.
We also acknowledge that we work with borrowers. We don’t take board seats. We’re not co-owners. We’re not in the boardroom every quarter. So we need to figure out what information we can get on a timely and frequent basis.
Can you talk a bit more about the theory of change you outlined in the report? How are you executing against it?
Our theory of change is that RSF connects capital with entrepreneurs and nonprofits that are helping solve the world’s biggest problems. We do this through interdependency and collaboration, in a way that ultimately changes how people look at money, shifting resources from an extractive to a regenerative economy. That’s what we’re aiming for at a systems level.
I half-jokingly say we’re not going to stop until all finance is regenerative. Is RSF going to do that alone? No, but the goal is to work with our partners in the space—other innovators like Climate First Bank, Amalgamated Bank, Beneficial State Bank, CDFIs, family offices and many others—to change the whole narrative around the role of money and how we can create the kind of world we want our kids and grandkids to live in.
RSF has so many great stories about the organizations it works with and supports. Could you share a favorite anecdote about your work with one of these organizations?
It’s hard to choose, but I’ll go with Lotus Foods because it touches on so many elements of impact.
First, it’s a rice company that worked with scientists to develop a method of growing rice that uses only 10% of the water of conventional rice agriculture. That’s super cool.
Then there’s the company’s model. The founders and CEO run Lotus thoughtfully, with principle and values-based decision-making. They work directly with smallholder farmers in Southeast Asia, supporting individual families and cutting out the middleman in a globalized, hyper-industrialized agricultural system. Plus, many of their farmers use regenerative organic principles, so that provides health and planetary benefits.
They also stand out as a great example of our own model of staying close and working in community. Early in the pandemic, Lotus called us and said their supply chain was struggling. Business was booming, but shipping costs from Asia to the United States had gotten drastically more expensive. They needed working capital – and quickly – to ensure that they could deliver their products to customers.
At that time, we had already been financing Lotus Foods for more than a decade. We had seen them weather challenges from the 2008 recession to tariffs in 2014. Time and time again, they proved that with values-aligned financing, they would overcome these bumps in the road and come out on top.
Because of the longstanding relationship and our detailed understanding of their business model, we were able to move quickly – they called us on Wednesday, and we got the loan out the door the following Thursday. Today, the business continues to succeed – and their founders are investors in our fund. It’s a great example of impact, partnership, and full-circle collaboration: A company is successful in part because of the partnership with RSF, and then they can also invest in RSF.
RSF envisions a world where all people have the power to use their money to regenerate people, communities, and the planet. Social Investment Fund notes are available for as little as $1,000. Learn more and get involved.
Jasper van Brakel is President & CEO of RSF, where he leads efforts to reimagine how finance can serve people, communities, and the planet. He oversees innovative lending and investment initiatives that align money with purpose and drive systemic social and environmental impact. Previously, Jasper was an operating partner at Armonia, a family office, and a partner at Newpark Capital, an impact-focused private equity firm. Earlier, he led Weleda North America as President & CEO. An economist and alumnus of Erasmus University Rotterdam and Harvard Business School (General Management Program), Jasper is a Finance Leadership Fellow at The Aspen Institute.
