Deal of the Week – This family impact-led investment group is a name likely to grow in prominence

The ever-increasing number of deals being done in the impact space by family offices will further accelerate in 2020. And to illustrate this point, a new name in the family-led impact investment sector is rising in prominence, doing its second deal in less than a month.  

Called Spring Point Partners, the Philadelphia-based group has invested alongside Omidyar Networks, the serial impact investment group owned by Pierre and Pam Omidyar, and two foundations into a startup called Edquity. The four backed the New York City-based startup with $2.4 million in seed capital. 

Edquity is a college financial planning app for high school and college students. It’s designed to help ensure that no student will need to drop out of college for financial reasons and that every student will be able to realise a positive return on his or her college investment. So, it’s a for-profit startup with a social side to it – hence the investors it has attracted. 

Of course, Omidyar Networks isn’t new to the world of impact investment – it pretty much wrote the playbook on this type of investing for family offices – but Spring Point is. 

Founded in 2017, Spring Point is an impact investment group owned by members of the Berwind family, one of the East Coast America’s wealthiest families. The Berwinds made their money in coal, but have since diversified into many different sectors, particularly real estate, where they own billions of dollars of property in the US.

Spring Point was founded by Graham, Jessica, James, and Joanna Berwind, the four children of Charles G. Berwind Jr., the fourth generation of the Berwind business dynasty, who helped the family business to diversify into other sectors and away from coal. He died nearly 10 years ago. The family’s main investment vehicle is the Berwind Group. 

In mid-December, Spring Point invested in NeuroFlow, a healthcare platform, which optimizes the way behavioural healthcare is delivered, tracked and assessed. 

Apart from the Edquity and NeoroFlow, Spring Point is new to the impact investment sector, but expect its name to pop up more in the years ahead.