In 2008, after 27 years of working for his sixth-generation family business that founded the C&A clothing retail chain, family entrepreneur Stephen Brenninkmeijer, created Willows Investments. He discusses funding and supporting promising ventures with a social mission.<\/p>\n
What is the mission of your family?<\/strong><\/p>\n To be a force for good. For community, for society, for the world where we work and to make a difference. As it says on the Cofra Holdings site, the holding company for my family\u2019s main business interests: \u201cWe aspire to advance the development, understanding and use of broader metrics in pursuit of investing in a socially responsible way. We can act upon our human values while we create economic value.\u201d<\/p>\n How have you incorporated these values into your own wealth?<\/strong><\/p>\n One way is through Willows Investments. I work with social entrepreneurs and in development finance, which started out with microfinance. I have eight investments in my portfolio. A good example is the company Auticon, it is a German business that works with people with autism, training them up to work as consultants in the IT industry.<\/p>\n Why did you decide to focus on impact investing?<\/strong><\/p>\n What I learnt from Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship was that you could run non-profit organisations like a business, then I took the next step and said: \u201cWhy don\u2019t you have people invest, rather than just give them a grant\u201d which was an important learning from microfinance. Traditionally people were supported through grants by non-government organisations, but once microfinance started giving them loans, recipients reacted and said: \u201cFinally people respect us\u201d. When I started, the term impact investing did not exist, but for me it was a no-brainer to support that next level of development.<\/p>\n