Ceniarth 2021 Annual Report
Download our full 2021 Annual Report
Introduction Letter from Our Directors
2021 was a challenging year on many fronts, but we remain unwavering in our intention to deliver impact-first capital to marginalized communities.
We take great pride at Ceniarth in our honesty, openness, and frankness. We are not going to sugarcoat it. 2021 was a tough year. The pandemic. continued to cause innumerable challenges to our investees, we suffered meaningful capital impairments, we struggled to deploy enough capital to substantially move the needle on our long-term, impact-first goal, and we grieved the passing of Ronnie Isenberg who, along with her late husband Eugene Isenberg, founded the Isenberg Family Charitable Foundation, Ceniarth’s primary philanthropic vehicle. It was, to put it bluntly, a slog.
Through it all, we stuck to our first principal of centering our work on communities in need. We spent the year recommitting to a number of core themes that were critical before COVID-19 and remain intractable problems: the unequal impact of climate change on vulnerable communities, the ongoing struggles of the world’s women, and the plight of marginalized communities. The pandemic continued to amplify these challenges, but, like all, we are learning to live with it as another thorny variable in the inherent risks of our work.
Despite the headwinds, we forged on making over $30M in new commitments in 2021 across 20 transactions, a pace very similar to 2020. Our work continued to span the globe with expanding activity in the U.S. CDFI and renewable finance market, renewed deployments in the financial services and agricultural sectors in Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as transactions that broke new ground for us in the Middle East. As you will read about in this annual report, these commitments represented trust in existing partners such as Global Partnerships, WaterEquity, and One Acre Fund, as well as confidence in new relationships with IIX, Kiva, Dirt Capital, and others.
2021 highlighted the common threads that we find in these partners, both new and old. Integrity, transparency, and rigor. Impact-first investing requires patience with uncertainty and tolerance for unexpected bumps in the road. These challenges can only be successfully and collaboratively navigated with partners willing to work hard on every detail and willing to share every aspect. Our annual reports are intended to illustrate our ongoing commitment to these values.