Advanced practices in gender lens investing: Inua Capital

Over the past few years, Criterion Institute has formalized a system of Advanced Practice to make these shifts visible and replicable. Built on four guiding interconnected principles – Will to Act, Integrity, Accountability, and Inclusion – this system provides a coherent framework for identifying current investment practices, analyzing power dynamics, and proposing shifts that can become new standards for asset owners and managers.

Investing in Africa’s future: A roadmap to dignified and fulfilling job creation

Criterion Institute’s investment thesis reimagines finance as a tool for systems change in Africa by aligning capital with power redistribution, gender analysis, and context-specific strategies to create dignified, inclusive economic growth.

Financial Barriers for Women Entrepreneurs: A Global Perspective

Advancing Research and Investment Standards for Gender Equity (ARISE) Consortium announced an exciting funding opportunity for research on closing the gender gap in financing for entrepreneurs. Nearly 400 entrepreneurs across the globe submitted research proposals and over 30 organizations were shortlisted for in-depth interviews on their work. 

Reimagining gender lens investing futures: Possibilities and perspectives from the field

Reimagining gender lens investing futures is both a reflection on the field today and a hopeful vision for where it could go, grounded in the real work of field builders across geographies and sectors. These practitioners continue to defend gender’s continued relevance to finance in the face of resistance. They are also expanding its role, reimagining its potential as a tool for change, and building the infrastructure needed to sustain that change over the next decade.

Advisory Board Welcome

This Welcome Video is for New Advisory Board Members Only

Advisory Boards at Criterion: Roles and Responsibilities

Innovative Finance with Coralus

This report presents the activities, outputs and outcomes of a joint initiative between Coralus and Criterion Institute, two organizations that are innovating finance for social good. The initiative broughttogether 45 contributors from Coralus and 15 experts from Criterion to explore how to design and implement financial models that support women and non-binary entrepreneurs in diverse and inclusive ways.

Reimagining resourcing for feminist movements: What’s possible?

Criterion Institute and the Equality Fund explored these ideas in a recent webinar featuring Yifat Susskind, Executive Director of Madre, Joy Anderson, Co-founder of Criterion Institute, and Kat Im-Jenkins, Managing Director of the Equality Fund.

Criterion Compensation Structure

On 1 January 2023, the Criterion Institute released a new compensation structure for employees and contractors, aiming to create transparency in compensation throughout the entire organization. The new structure was aimed at supporting the diverse workforce drawn from a variety of backgrounds across the globe and to support continued pay equity across this workforce. Based on a lockstep model of equal pay for equal experience and roles, the compensation model removes all secrecy from pay structures.