Strengthening Pathways for Impact

Looking Ahead to 2026: Strengthening Pathways for Impact

In Candide Group’s 13-year history, supporting 168 companies and funds, we have always operated from the guiding principle of trusting community expertise and seeking to be partners who respond to ever-evolving social justice needs across many sectors and geographies. We also recognized, in time, the need to evolve as community partners, better serving them by building real expertise in key areas: Home and Place, Employee Empowerment, Climate Justice, and Diverse Allocators & Entrepreneurs, which are now the four pillars of impact at Candide.

We are pleased to share our progress in these areas below, and our vision for the upcoming year — if you know of great projects in these areas seeking support, don’t hesitate to contact us! Even under the psychic strain of our current political landscape, we are building fires of hope and change together.

In solidarity,

George Ashton

CEO of Candide Group

Our Impact Verticals: 2026 Outlook & Priorities

Home & Place

In 2025, Candide formally established its Home and Place vertical to flow impact capital into real estate strategies that advance housing stability and expand ownership opportunities. The vertical launched amid proposed federal funding cuts, extreme affordability pressure, and persistent racial and income wealth gaps — conditions that leave nearly half of U.S. renters cost-burdened and homeownership out of reach for many.

Against this backdrop, Candide has met the moment. In 2025, we facilitated investments into:

Habitat for Humanity’s fund accelerating the development of single-family homes for low-wealth homebuyers;
Partners in Equity, explicitly designed to close the commercial real estate gap for local small business owners; and
The Vistria Group’s first affordable housing fund, led by a woman of color who raised over $1B to preserve affordable rental housing.

Looking ahead to 2026, the vertical will continue to prioritize pathways to ownership for BIPOC communities, stability for families through long-term affordability and cultural preservation, and innovative models that transform traditional housing approaches — including land trusts, community-centered development, and fractionalized ownership.

— Kyle Ruane

Investment Director, Home & Place

Image courtesy of EB PREC; depicting community space Omni-Commons in Oakland, CA

Employee Empowerment

In 2025, Candide also formed its Employee Empowerment vertical to channel impact capital into ownership-driven business models that expand wealth-building opportunities for workers — at a time of widening income and wealth inequality, declining job quality in many sectors, and persistent barriers to asset ownership that have left most U.S. workers without a meaningful financial stake in the companies they help build. In recent years, Candide has supported a wide range of intermediaries in the employee ownership space, including:

A range of intermediaries supporting the growth of the cooperative economy, including Seed Commons, a network of place-based lenders supporting their local cooperative economies, Shared Capital, a MN-based CDFI, and Project Equity, a non-profit focused on employee ownership conversions;
Apis & Heritage, a fund manager that finances conversions for businesses with a predominantly BIPOC/LMI workforce into 100% ESOPs;
Obran Cooperative, an innovative approach to expanding employee ownership using a holding company.

The field nonetheless faced persistent challenges as smaller employee ownership (EO) funds struggled to close deals and convert additional companies to EO.

Against this backdrop, a look ahead to 2026, we will be looking to support various strategies under this vertical. Our investments will prioritize catalyzing new intermediaries with a path to scale in the employee ownership space, seeding and/or growing EO holding companies, intermediaries and/or holding companies with a deep commitment to improving quality jobs for low-income workers, and supporting existing, smaller EO intermediaries through co-investments.

— Aner Ben-Ami

Founding Partner; CIO; Co-Managing Director, Afterglow

Image courtesy of Shared Capital Cooperative; depicting Happy Earth Cleaning Cooperative in Minneapolis

Climate Justice

In 2025, Candide deepened its focus on Climate Justice by directing impact capital into solutions that expand clean energy access, restore ecosystems, and strengthen community resilience — in the face of dwindling federal support, escalating climate impacts, and persistent environmental inequities affecting frontline communities. With Candide’s Afterglow Climate Justice Fund surpassing $50M in AUM and more than 60% of capital deployed, the debt vehicle is accelerating investments in this critical space, including:

Re-Volv, which helps non-profits in historically excluded communities across the country go solar, from project development to providing zero-down financing. They have installed 4MW+ across 18 states, serving more than 200,000 beneficiaries to date;
Ho’ahu Energy Collective Molokai, a community-led non-profit cooperative working to build renewable energy projects for the benefit of the community on the Island of Molokai, in Hawai'i, a state with the highest energy costs in the US; and
Outside of Afterglow, Candide has also facilitated investments into regenerative agriculture through funds managed by Mad Capital, Dirt Capital Partners, and Ecotrust Forests.

Despite these wins, the sector also faced significant challenges, including frozen federal funding for disadvantaged communities, accelerated sunset provisions for clean energy tax credits, and rising electricity prices.

In response, 2026 will prioritize efforts to double down on Afterglow as developer demand grows; support intermediaries addressing the climate justice capital gap; expand ownership of farmland for BIPOC farmers through partners; and seek best-in-class climate VCs with an emphasis on manager and portfolio diversity.

— Neal Parikh
Co-Managing Director, Afterglow

Image courtesy of Re-Volv; depicting Harbor House Solar Project in Oakland, CA

Diverse Allocators & Entrepreneurs

In 2025, Candide advanced its Diverse Allocators & Entrepreneurs vertical to channel impact capital to funds and companies led by underrepresented investors and founders — amid persistent disparities in capital access that have left less than 2% of early-stage funding reaching BIPOC-led startups. Grounded in the belief that investing in diverse leadership strengthens performance and expands equitable economic opportunity, Candide and its clients continue to back high-conviction emerging managers including:

Cherryrock Capital, an all women of color-led, emerging VC fund manager that seeks to invest in Black and Latinx founders at the Series A stage and later (an important capital bridge for these founders);
An all woman-led fund investing in technologies that improve women’s health equity, access, and care, managed by SteelSky Ventures.

These milestones unfolded amid anti-DEI backlash that slowed momentum for diverse and emerging allocators, liquidity constraints, and limited exits, driving a cautious approach in private equity as investors shifted towards more established managers.

With this backdrop, 2026 priorities center on doubling down on emerging managers raising a subsequent fund with early signs of success; leaning into new strategies such as supporting entrepreneurship through small business acquisitions; and supporting BIPOC managers with strong traction and sector expertise.

— Kimberli Cavazos Haywood
Director of Investments

Image courtesy of Steel Sky Ventures; depicting Founding & Managing Partner, Maria Toler

Please Welcome our New Investment Director of Home & Place: Kyle Ruane!

Q: What are you most excited about, stepping into the role of Director of Home & Place?

The opportunity to invest holistically across the affordable housing and community development landscape. Many funds are narrow in scope and most are limited to incremental solutions rather than truly novel approaches. But solving structural problems in affordability requires a broad toolkit. I'm excited that Candide can back the full spectrum: from innovative financing models to policy interventions to community ownership structures. After evaluating dozens of housing strategies in previous roles, I’m convinced that real impact comes from understanding how these pieces connect and deploying capital where it's genuinely catalytic, not just filling gaps that would close anyway.

Q: As federal funding retreats, how can impact-focused housing developers and organizations step up?

Federal funding alone was never going to solve housing affordability in the United States. The developers and organizations that will succeed are the ones who start by listening to their communities, understanding actual needs rather than assuming solutions. Start small, validate your model and theory of change with real projects and real residents, then scale what works.

But validation means more than good intentions. You need to prove the impact is real and durable, execute with discipline, deliver on time and on budget, and structure your mission into how you finance and govern projects. Do that well, and impact investors can help you scale. Over time the constraint won’t be capital, it will be the number of housing solutions that are both financially sustainable and genuinely responsive to community needs.

Q: What are you most looking forward to bringing into Candide Group — be that strategy, experience, or a new perspective?

A blend of execution focus, impact rigor, and creative financing perspective. I bring healthy skepticism about impact claims: What's the counterfactual? Is this catalytic or extractive? How do we measure real outcomes? And I'm excited to help source creative capital solutions that traditional lenders struggle to finance but that unlock meaningful affordability for underserved communities.

Beyond deal evaluation, I want to help tell the story of affordable housing: the connectivity between stable housing and financial stability, upward mobility, health and education outcomes, generational wealth creation. Housing isn't just real estate. It's the foundation for everything else. If we can articulate that clearly, we unlock both better investment opportunities and broader support for the work.

Q: What developments with housing and community development are you most intrigued by right now?

Three areas stand out: First, alternative homeownership pathways that build wealth for communities historically excluded from ownership (an area I’ve spent time in previously as both an investor and operator). Not just traditional mortgages, but shared equity models, land trusts, lease-to-own structures, approaches that create pathways to ownership for families locked out of conventional financing. The racial wealth gap won't close without addressing homeownership, and I'm interested in models that make it accessible and sustainable.

Second, strategies for revitalizing communities that have been historically displaced, ensuring that investment actually benefits existing residents rather than accelerating gentrification. This means community ownership structures, anti-displacement mechanisms, and financing that prioritizes local wealth building over extraction. Third, creative financing models for affordable rental housing, strategies that aren't just layering more LIHTC but fundamentally rethinking capital structures, whether that's blended capital stacks, new credit enhancement approaches, or finding value in underutilized assets like energy efficiency improvements or donated land.

Bonus: Tell us about a hobby you really love, or a memory or person that inspires you!

Over the last few years, I’ve returned to screenwriting as a hobby out of necessity. Too many airport delays and long flights with nothing but my laptop. Turns out those hours are perfect for writing, and it's become the thing I actually look forward to when I see a long flight on my calendar. Most of what I write is for the people I admire, often pulling from favorite memories and adapting them into something new. Bet you didn't think I'd work all three into the same answer!

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