Questions at stake: Why is the Geneva Foundation for the Future interested in transforming finance?

When the Geneva Foundation for the Future audits an impact project, whatever its size, it asks itself 4 fundamental questions:

• Who wants to know/do what, and why?
• What will be done with this knowledge/new products or services?
• Who will benefit from the knowledge generated or the products/services created?
• Who accepts to lose out as a result of the new knowledge generated or these new products/services becoming available?

To these 4 questions, the Foundation adds the criteria of the AGILE tool and provides an evaluation that is always as honest and transparent as possible.

We could ask ourselves these four questions directly regarding the Foundation itself.

This article aims to make visible, with full transparency, the fundamental questions that the Foundation grapples with when it develops its own approaches and tools. It is therefore less a diagnosis of an external actor than an exercise in self-reflexivity: clarifying at once the motivations, interests, beneficiaries, and potential consequences of the trajectory chosen by the Foundation.

By publishing these elements, the Geneva Foundation for the Future seeks to enable observers – partners, investors, project leaders, institutions, citizens – to understand the key issues at the heart of its action, the interests surrounding it, and how it intends to position its contribution within the impact finance ecosystem.

It is in this spirit that the four structuring questions are presented below, serving as a compass for the Foundation in its work of aligning money with real impact.

What we seek to know, for whom, why, and with what consequences.

The Geneva Foundation for the Future works to align finance with impact projects. This may lead to an interest in the transformations in the way finance or entrepreneurship act, think, and connect. Behind the concepts of “impact,” “resilience,” or “financing life,” lies an essential question if one wishes to contextualize the writings and proposals of the Foundation:
What are the Foundation’s interests? Why does it produce this knowledge? Who benefits from it? And who might lose or gain in this transformation?

To shed light on these issues, four key questions serve as our compass.

1. Who wants to know what, and why?

The Geneva Foundation for the Future seeks to understand how to reconnect financial flows to real projects: local initiatives, ecological transitions, social innovations. It does not aim to find out how to optimize derivatives, but rather how to disintermediate finance to make it more fluid, more direct, more just.

Why this action? Because billions lie dormant or circulate aimlessly, generating money from money, while high-impact projects, capable of deploying an economically viable model and generating investment returns, await funding. The Foundation therefore wants to know how to create operational bridges between available funds and unmet vital needs.

2. What will be done with this knowledge?

This knowledge will not remain in drawers. It fuels:

• A concrete tool: the AGILE Tool, an impact project assessment framework, simple and easy to use on a daily basis, accessible to investors, foundations, institutions, incubators;

• A white paper, presenting a systemic vision of ethical finance and its practical applications, along with a number of recommendations for positioning oneself effectively in impact finance;

• Training, mentoring, and delegated services, to increase profits from using such tools, ensuring decision-making criteria are clear, shared, and interoperable with ESG, SDG, or the European green taxonomy standards.

"The AGILE Tool embodies a philosophy of disintermediated finance: no derivatives, no speculative instruments – just a transparent alignment between funds and the field."

This new knowledge, generated through practice on the Foundation’s platform, enables acting, deciding, and structuring financial flows differently.

3. Who will benefit from the knowledge generated?

Three main groups benefit directly:

• Project leaders, entrepreneurs, incubators, and industrial players, who gain access to a clear method to better secure funding but above all to better develop profitable and sustainable business models for impact projects;

• Investors, who find here a rigorous and useful analysis tool to make choices aligned with their ethical vision, while being simple, agile, and fast to use on a daily basis;

• Foundations, major philanthropists, donors, and public institutions, who can harmonize their criteria and better track the real impact of their funding.

Indirectly, territories, communities, and the environment also benefit from a more virtuous and strategic use of money thus directed to the field.

4. Who agrees to lose because of the new knowledge generated?

Talking about “loss” is often taboo. But here, transparency requires clarity.

Those who could lose are:

• Financial intermediation actors, whose remuneration depends on the complexity of products;

• Certain speculative models, which thrive on money that never reaches the field;

• A part of the current financial system, for whom disintermediation, impact traceability, or the reduction of opacity margins are perceived as threats.

"This bridge aims to restore a direct link between money and mission, without speculative tools or opaque intermediaries."

In reality, there is no need to speak of “losses” here.

People and organizations whose income still depends on old financial models have nothing to fear from the transition: concrete and rewarding alternatives exist. Like former whaling ship captains who became captains of whale protection vessels, they not only increased their income but also improved their physical safety and regained a deep sense of purpose in their professional engagement. Similarly, financial professions can evolve toward roles in impact assessment, ethical portfolio management, or advisory in regenerative investment or circular economy. The shift toward living finance is an increase in skills and humanity.

But the Foundation embraces this choice: regenerating finance will require redefining priorities, even if it challenges certain established habits.

Conclusion: a finance with an open face

The Geneva Foundation for the Future does not aim to replace markets or impose a single doctrine. It seeks, proposes, and provides, in full transparency, tools for each actor – investor, entrepreneur, philanthropist, public or private stakeholder – to reconcile real impact and economic viability.

And it does so while acknowledging its interests: structuring an international ecosystem where money once again becomes a driver of life, and not a speculative end. If this means some models must change, then that is the price to pay to build a finance that feeds society instead of draining it.

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