Impact Exits
Build on the foundations. Deep dive into Innovative Finance topics.
Impact Exits
- Date
- September 29, October 1, October 6, and October 8, 2026
- Location
- Virtual, 14:00 UTC
- Investment
- USD $199
- Doors close
- Friday 18 September
You spent years building something that mattered.
Found the company, made the case, sat on the board, helped it grow into an enterprise you were proud of. Now you're thinking about how to leave.
Most exits get handled the way exits have always been handled: find a buyer, run a process, take the best offer. The mission, the culture, the people who built the company alongside you, they become someone else's problem, or someone else's asset. What if instead of the exit being a moment of vulnerability for the impact that you created, it was the moment that you worked together to preserve or enhance the impact of the business? What if you worked with the founders and other investors to design an exit strategy that aligns the interests of all parties and prioritizes the impact that has and will be created and values the contributions of the employees and the community?
This course is where you can learn how to think systematically about all of these ideas.
Who is this 201 course for?
Impact investors ready to treat the exit as a design decision, not a formality. The departure of an investor can determine who owns the company next, who benefits from the wealth it generates, and whether the mission that justified the investment in the first place survives the transaction.
This is a 201-level course. We assume you already have the fundamentals and are ready to go deep on the one moment in the investment cycle that gets the least attention. If you're structuring, managing, or advising on investments in mission-driven enterprises, inside an impact fund, a family office, a foundation, a DFI, or an advisory firm, and exits are part of your mandate, your clients' reality, or your organization's near-term horizon, this is built for you.
No prior exit training required. What matters is that you have enough proximity to real deals to bring live questions into the room.
The framework
Why?
The Company's Next Chapter
- AActive transition underway
- BTransition worth exploring
- CInvestor needs liquidity
- DCompany needs liquidity
What?
The Investor's Role
- Financing partner
- Catalyst for a conversation
- Clean exit partner
Who?
Who benefits, decides, and protects the mission?
- Who benefits?
- Who decides?
- Who protects the mission?
How?
The Exit Method
- Repay or buyback over time
- Buyout at a point in time
- Give away or write off
- Combination
What you'll learn, and how
Four live sessions, each built around one question from the Impact Exits framework: why, what, who, how. Every session pairs a short conceptual walk-through with a real case study and a live working session in breakout groups, so you're applying the framework to actual deals, not just hearing about them.
And one case study runs through the entire course. Across all four sessions, you'll work through the same real exit, live, in stages, exactly as the people inside it experienced it. Each session hands you a new layer of the story and a specific task to work through in breakout groups, based only on what you know at that point. Then the facilitator reveals what actually happened, and you find out how your group's thinking compared to reality. You won't know the ending until the final session.
Session 1 September 29
Why are you considering an exit?
The four situations an investor might find themselves in, an active transition already underway, a transition worth raising, a founder who wants to keep running the company while the investor gets liquidity, or a company that itself needs capital, and why naming your real situation honestly matters more than reaching for the easy one.
We open the running case study here, so you have the full course ahead of you to work through it.
Session 2 October 1
What is your role in the transition?
Financing partner, catalyst for a conversation, or clean exit partner: which role is actually available to you, given your ownership stake, your contractual rights, and the founder across the table.
Case study: an employee ownership transition, presented end to end with a focus on what the investor's role actually looked like in practice.
Session 3 October 6
Who benefits, decides, and protects?
The three questions most exit conversations skip entirely, at the moment of the transaction and in the company that persists afterward. This is the intellectual core of the framework.
Case study: an employee and community ownership transition.
Session 4 October 8
How do you execute?
Repay or buy back over time, a point-in-time buyout, give away or write off, or some combination, and which fits which situation.
Case study: Joanna Ehrenreich on a nonprofit ownership exit. This is also where the running case study resolves. You'll see exactly how it was structured, what instruments were used, and what the financial and impact outcomes actually were.
You'll learn the Impact Exits framework directly from the practitioners who helped build it and the case studies inside it, not from a lecture.
You'll leave with more than notes. You'll leave with a preliminary exit strategy for an investment you're actually working on, designed deliberately, with the company's next chapter at the center.
Learn from the practitioners behind the framework
Aunnie Patton Power
Founder of the Innovative Finance Initiative and lead facilitator, has designed hundreds of millions of dollars of innovative financing instruments, including the first social impact bonds in Africa, and is the author of Adventure Finance.
Juan Jardon Pina
Latin America representative of the Innovative Finance Initiative and facilitator of the Impact Exits Mission. He has a background in investment banking, public policy, impact investing and innovative finance sectors.
Julie Menter
Program Director at Transform Finance, works to mobilize support for alternative ownership enterprises through research, investor education, and community building.
Lisa Schemmerling
Project Manager at Purpose Foundation, where she serves as a central connector across Purpose Evergreen Capital, Purpose Ventures, and the Purpose Consulting team, guiding small and medium-sized enterprises toward steward-ownership.
Maike Kauffman
Co-lead of the nonprofit work at Purpose, has been central to defining and growing international adoption of steward ownership, and facilitates the course's running case study.
Selam Kebrom
An impact finance practitioner with nearly a decade in global development, works at Camelback Ventures channeling capital toward entrepreneurs from underrepresented communities.
Joanna Ehrenreich
Leads the 100% for Purpose Club at Newman's Own Foundation, building a movement of companies that donate all of their profits to purpose.
Frédéric Madry
Founder of Unoya, supports investors and organizations putting impact at the center of their capital strategy.
When does the 201 course take place?
The next Impact Exits 201 cohort launches in September 2026. Sessions will take place via Zoom on Tuesdays (29 September, 6 October) and Thursdays (1 October, 8 October) at 14:00 UTC. Each session is 1.5 hours.
What's included
- Four live sessions plus recordings if you can't make one live.
- The full Impact Exits playbook.
- A course workbook with case studies, reading lists, and the Miro board used in live sessions.
- Access to the IFI Alumni community after the course ends.
Can't make these dates?
We run this course multiple times a year, in different time zones. Check the calendar for the next cohort, or join the waitlist to hear first.
Ready to enrol?
Sign up for Impact Exits, our 201 Deep Dive course
Doors close Friday 18 September