Catalytic Futures Fund

The Catalytic Futures Fund is a catalytic capital vehicle housed in a donor-advised fund (DAF), investing across mission-aligned and program-related opportunities. Through early-stage ventures, recoverable grants, and other flexible instruments, the Catalytic Futures Fund supports solutions that create a more inclusive, sustainable, and resilient economy designed with and for young people.

The fund supports innovations that expand access to opportunity, wealth, and wellbeing for the next generation, especially those historically excluded from traditional systems of investment and decision-making.

Evolution: From lab to fund

The Catalytic Futures Fund started as an 18 month-long fellowship, launched in partnership with SecondMuse Capital, called the Future Economy Lab (FEL): Abundantly Investing in Girls and Gender Expansive-Youth of Color. The fellowship immersed girls and gender-expansive youth ages 13 to 24 from across the U.S., in co-creating economic systems to achieve a plan for economic justice and wellbeing — and it also brought the broader question of: “What does economic justice and wellbeing for you and your communities look like?”

In this fellowship, the 39 youth participants shared unique insights into their lived experiences, and answered what it means to be invested in and developed a north star vision. They then surveyed almost 500 other young people around the country to determine what investments would be most catalytic. Young people identified a north star vision:

“An abundant future is where we are consistently thriving in a tranquil world, surrounded by a sustainable society built on communal love reimagined, that is inclusive of all of us and our cultures.” They determined that future economy rooted in this vision is:

Economically inclusive and resilient
Housing secure
Sustainable + climate-adaptive
Healthy
Supportive of their artistic and cultural production

Highlights

500

Almost 500 youth, investors, entrepreneurs, and philanthropic leaders collaborated to support the design of the fund. Their collective vision anchors the Fund’s mission and values.

The Catalytic Futures Fund deploys capital that reflects what young people say they need to build the future they deserve.

The Catalytic Futures Fund’s aim is to co-create and launch financial mechanisms and strategies that increase investments with young people and not only for them.

A structure is being developed to resource the entrepreneurial visions of young people and to include them in the governance of the fund.