Impact investors – and brothers – Jack (left) and Ralph Taylor (right) first collaborated with Root Capital back in 1999. Credit: Jack and Ralph Taylor
In the late 1990s, brothers Jack and Ralph Taylor were on a mission. After having been involved in community development finance and smallholder agriculture in the northeastern United States, they were interested in identifying impact investment opportunities around the world. This led them to Willy Foote, whom they first met in 1998, a year before he founded Root Capital.
The Challenge
The brothers found that there were no organizations at the time providing loan capital to small- and medium-sized rural enterprises.
“Willy wanted to start a loan facility for smallholder agriculture,” explains Ralph, “and we were interested in taking a little more risk than others to provide catalytic capital for small and medium enterprises.”
This was the seed of what would become a 25-year long collaboration, turning the Taylor brothers into some of the earliest and most committed supporters of Root Capital.
The Guatemalan cooperative Asociación Barillense de Agricultores (or “ASOBAGRI”, pictured above) was Root Capital’s first lending client. They directly benefited from the generosity of funders like the Taylors. Credit: Root Capital.
Our Collaboration
The Taylor brothers provided a third of the loan capital for the smallholder agriculture loan facility, which Willy was able to use for the first five years.
“My brother and I favored ‘market’ solutions,” Jack explains. “In other words, solutions that had the promise of not only meeting the social and environmental ends we were trying to achieve, but also to return capital. That didn’t necessarily mean we wanted a market-rate return on our capital, but that ideally the organization would become self-sustaining over time. And we saw the possibility of that in what Willy was doing.”
After that first collaboration, the Taylor brothers started a long-term partnership with Root Capital, with Jack joining the organization as a board member and advisor, and both brothers remaining steadfast partners over the years.
“My sweet spot for investing has been where three things converge: community economic development, conservation of natural resources, and social wellbeing – or you might even say, social justice,” comments Jack. “Root Capital is where these three things intersect. Even better, they are doing this internationally, where it can have the most impact.”
The Impact
Twenty-five years into their collaboration with Root Capital, the Taylor brothers feel “overwhelmed” by the scale of social and environmental impact they have been able to support.
“I think the results are beyond what my brother and I could ever have imagined,” comments Jack. “We have positively impacted millions of lives and helped conserve hundreds of thousands of hectares of land in areas of high biodiversity, where it has the greatest impact on the stewardship of the Earth.”
“Willy Foote’s passion for collaboration has created a much stronger agrifinance sector than would have been possible had he not committed staff and time to build relationships and trust,” explains Ralph. “Root Capital has been a pioneer in developing the broader field of agrifinance, and its focus on collaboration has been critical to building the agricultural development sector and the impact investment sector,” adds Jack.