Donor-Partner Q&A: RS Group

For our Donor-Partner Q&A, we speak to RS Group about how Heading for Change has helped to sharpen their understanding of the intricate relationship between gender and climate, and the ways in which philanthropy can provide a bridge and learning platform for funders to gain exposure to impact investing.

What has been your journey so far when it comes to moving money with a focus on gender and why does this focus matter in your context?

RS Group’s journey began around 15 years ago when we started to pivot our entire capital portfolio towards investing for a better world, with a particular focus on climate change. Our motivation to do so stemmed from a belief that we have the responsibility to invest in a way that contributes to the well-being of society and the planet at the same time. Whilst the world has changed a lot over these 15 years, we remain focused on adopting a systems-level mindset and using our resources available across the spectrum of capital to support actors (from fund managers to entrepreneurs) who are addressing the world’s urgent environmental and social issues.

While we do not have an explicit gender lens, gender diversity has always been an important aspect of our investment and philanthropic work. Our managers and partners have always ensured consideration of this important aspect in our investment and ESG analyses, grant making and various initiatives. We recognise how important women are in society, yet many women, especially those in developing parts of the world, are often overlooked and experience unequal access to opportunities. It is usually the women in the household who play a crucial role in taking care of the family and who carry an extra sense of responsibility. For example, from our past collaborations, we have witnessed how empowering women through securing land tenure can lead to positive environmental and social outcomes. 

What excites you about Heading for Change and how has it sharpened the climate and gender finance nexus for you?

Working with HfC has been a real privilege for our team. Firstly, we feel honoured to be able to support the HfC team in continuing Suzanne’s legacy: she was a remarkable individual whose work helped inform our own journey. In addition, the HfC team has helped to sharpen our understanding of the intricate relationship between gender equity and climate action. We are able to see how climate change can disproportionately impact women, and how the HfC team has been able to uncover fund managers, many led by women, aiming to address this challenge.

We are also inspired by the way that the HfC team has adopted a field building mindset: not only have they built a comprehensive evaluation framework around impact screening, management, and reporting, but they are also open to sharing their learnings with partners, stakeholders, and the field at large. By doing so, they are supporting others in the field seeking to learn and incorporate a gender lens in their climate investment work – a testament to HfC’s leadership and clear intentions to build the field. Finally, their use of grant funding to enable initiatives which help provide education and case studies, using their own investees, is a great way to demonstrate how to use capital across the spectrum.

In what ways are you hoping to further advance gender and climate finance?

We hope more work can be done to demonstrate how investment capital can ultimately flow to reach organisations that recognise the importance of creating a world of greater equality, as we see that this capital shift can be a key lever to address climate change. In our own impact investment and philanthropy work focused on nature and biodiversity, we have come to deeply appreciate the importance of indigenous people and local communities, especially the women in these communities and how they play a central role in conserving and protecting their own natural ecosystems. We believe that empowering women from local communities can ensure longer-term buy-in from other local actors such that more sustainable solutions can be enabled to halt the rapid destruction of our natural assets. Therefore, we hope through HfC’s demonstration portfolio and its case studies, HfC can concretely show investors how gender and climate can truly intersect. 

What reflections have you had about what might help move the field forward and unlock more capital at scale?

HfC’s work is helping to validate our view that the sector really needs more early-stage and patient capital across the spectrum to support many new fund managers and ventures. We believe such ‘catalytic capital’ is crucially needed to rapidly support these teams in building up their track record and data to validate their new idea and actions. This validation is vital to help provide commercial investors with greater trust and confidence to unlock their capital at scale, especially when it comes to initiatives related to nature and biodiversity.

Finally, using philanthropic funding as an entry point to approach individuals interested in women empowerment and climate is both a sensible and smart choice, as philanthropy can provide a bridge and learning platform for funders to gain exposure to impact investing, with the potential that they might eventually include impact investing as an additional tool to drive the change they want to see.

Find out more about Heading for Change’s investment thesis and portfolio companies