CH. 04
Impact Report 2024/ Impact Report 2024/

Delivering Results:
Catalytic Finance

Report
Published Date June 09, 2025

Finance Systems Overview

How can innovative finance unlock solutions at scale? In this chapter we explore several components of the work we support in this field.

Here you’ll find out more about how innovative finance, when paired with unlikely partnerships, is helping close critical funding gaps.

Global Economic Recovery (GER): In 2024, over 3.3 billion people lived in countries paying more to service debt than they could spend on healthcare, education, and more. Through advocacy, policy innovation, and coalition-building, The Rockefeller Foundation’s Global Economic Recovery initiative is working to change that, ensuring developing countries can access the finance they need.

Innovative Finance: We also share highlights such as the Aligned Climate Fund 2 and the Zero Gap Fund. These show the Foundation’s commitment to leverage private investment and innovative financial structures that can help tackle the world’s most pressing challenges.

 

Read this chapter to see how creative financial tools are unlocking impact for people and planet.
deep dive:

Mombak — Reforestation Reimagined

Working together in innovative ways improves livelihoods and revitalizes revenue streams, especially when reimaging industries such as agriculture and reforestation. Projects such as Mombak, a Brazilian startup, supported by The Rockefeller Foundation, which works with landowners and has created the world’s largest, high-quality carbon removal platform.

Monica Silva is known as the mother of the seedlings. She wakes up most mornings at 4 am to catch the bus to Turmalina Farm to care for what she calls “the children.” Ms. Silva works tending plants for Mombak, a project focused on generating high-quality carbon credits through reforestation of the Amazon.

“When the seedlings get here, they are like little babies. They’ve endured long trips, and many arrive damaged. It’s my job to help prepare them to be planted,” she said.

Native seedlings at Mombak's Turmalina's Nursery in northern Brazil. (Photo Credit: Nahal Mottaghian)

Brazil is home to 60 percent of the Amazon Basin, home to nearly 10 percent of the earth’s biodiversity and 16 percent of its freshwater. But over the last 50 years, Brazil’s Amazon has lost about a fifth of its forest cover to deforestation, in part due to cattle ranching.

Since 2023, The Rockefeller Foundation has been proud to support Mombak’s efforts with their network of unlikely partners. So how does it work? Once Mombak partners with landowners, they supply the seedlings, employees, and land managers necessary for reforestation. Through data analysis of land parcels, Mombak calculates the carbon removal potential of each project and sells high-quality carbon removal credits to companies that want to offset their residual emissions.

Landowners receive a percentage of the revenue from those sales, creating a new and passive revenue stream that can be three to five times greater per hectare than their revenue from cattle ranching.

To date, Mombak’s reforestation efforts have created as many as seven times more jobs than existing cattle ranching operations, providing above-average wages and benefits like healthcare and vacation for people like Ms. Silva.

“It is an honor to be a part of something that is not just business,” said Ms. Silva. “It’s a part of the future of our children and our grandchildren.”

download the Catalytic finance chapter
Help us spread the word

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grantee spotlight story
Stories from the field: The Gambia

Finance on the Gambian coast

As a child, Isatou Camara reveled in the vibrant coastal landscape where towering palm trees framed pristine beaches. Today, erosion and rising sea levels have carved away much of the sand where she once played and destroyed farmland. “The speed at which the sea is claiming our land is alarming,” she says. Erosion isn’t all that worries her. The Gambia has seen massive windstorms and torrential rains pummel homes, claim lives, and rack up hundreds of millions of dollars in damage.

As her country’s new director of climate finance, Camara has become a powerful advocate for The Gambia’s path to resilience through her participation in a fellowship supported by the Foundation as part of an effort to build capacity in the finance ministries of vulnerable countries.

Fellows are mentored on a broad range of topics, from reforming the international financial system to supporting economies through carbon financing.

read the grantee impact story
Isatou Camara interviewed by the BBC during COP26 (Photo Courtesy of Isatou Camara)
Isatou Camara interviewed by the BBC during COP26 in Glasgow. (Photo Courtesy of Isatou Camara)

Transformational Numbers

 

Innovative Finance Results

The Rockefeller Foundation works to put innovative financial tools in the hands of our partners to advance progress. These numbers show how our Innovative Finance team works with partners and grantees to bridge funding gaps for solutions that are good for people and planet.

  • $1.04Billion

    mobilized from partnering investors through the Zero Gap Fund

  • 82.8Million

    tons of CO2e avoided or sequestered in the United States and India

  • 15.6Million

    hectares protected or under sustainable cultivation in the United States, Brazil, and India

On Reflection

What We Are Learning From Our Catalytic Finance Work

Agreement isn’t essential, embracing candor and conflict is.

When we started allocating funds from our finance portfolio, we looked for partners with a deep understanding and experience operating in local markets.

This means having proven investment skills and understanding how businesses thrive and deliver results and putting systems in place to hear and respond to community needs. Mombak is demonstrating that this hypothesis is valid. Moving forward, we will continue to prioritize strong in-market players that demonstrate deep local connections and market insights.

Polarization opens doors, too.

The GER team’s work has focused on acting as a trusted, neutral partner for stewarding political processes across a range of partners. Accomplishing that has required us to leverage our convening power, expertise, and innovation to drive change in the short term, while also laying the groundwork for long-term results. As part of the process, the GER team has taken steps to integrate feedback from civil society and national stakeholders, which will help us continue to refine our approach and maintain momentum into the future.

Native seedlings at Mombak’s Turmalina Farm in northern Brazil. (Photo Credit: Nahal Mottaghian)

Download the Catalytic Finance chapter or our full impact report now.

Download the Catalytic Finance chapter

Download the full 2024 Impact Report

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