Gordon Chan - World Vision
About Gordon Chan
Gordan Chan is the current Senior New Business Advisor for World Vision. Gordan has spent the last nine years working for various NGOs including Engineer without Borders Canada and Free to Feed before starting at World Vision Australia in 2017 as a Economic Development Advisor.
Q1: Tell me about your role at World Vision.
Senior New Business Advisor which involves looking after impact investing work in addition to social finance for World Vision Australia. We sit in the Economic Development Team.
Q2: You mentioned working on impact investing projects; as this is a relatively new concept within the social enterprise space, what is World Vision’s approach to conducting an impact investment?
“We’re the only kind of global NGO that has that, exposing us to a lot of in-house financial expertise but also a baseline operation to build off of such as microfinance loans.”
It's still a lot of learning for us right now and is something we're building as we go. A big advantage for us is that we have Vision Fund, our microfinance arm. We’re the only kind of global NGO that has that, exposing us to a lot of in-house financial expertise but also a baseline operation to build off of such as microfinance loans. We have issued investments based on those as a way of repayment; as a way of generating income. Now, we're also building off of that by looking at investing in private sector partners that we engage with and the project work that we do at World Vision as well.
Q3: Following on from that, how do you measure the level of social impact made from these impact investments?
“It is spelt out very clearly how all the activities link up to our ultimate goal or World Vision’s values.”
Yet being in the private sector through Deloitte, we have access to our global network and can generally find more ‘bandwidth’. We have many more tools than otherwise would be available to the public sector at our disposal. So often partnerships between the public and private sector can be a good way to create an opportunity for the public sector to leverage the capabilities and opportunities available in other sectors. And for that reason, I think that these things are complementary.
More importantly, when like-minded people come together to pursue a common purpose, ‘the Victorian public purpose sector’ as Kym Peake, who's the secretary of the DHHS likes to call it, resources are able to be optimised.
Q4: How is the NGO or social enterprise space evolving and what is World Vision doing to adapt to these changes?
Thematically, I think there's a lot more focus on gender and women's economic empowerment, as well as climate and indigenous issues. Private sector involvement has also been key, which has definitely ramped up in the past couple of years. We really see this in areas such as impact investing and management of contractors which is almost similar to outsourcing for other forms of government activities. They would also outsource the development aid to for-profit companies, something that has recently evolved in the industry. If we look longer term, there are big megatrends that are definitely going to come and hit us such as urbanisation and technological evolution
Q5: What are some internal or industry specific barriers that actually make it harder for you to create the impact you want?
I think certainly speaking on the economic development side and impact investing in general, everybody carries their own philosophies on the extent to which the private sector could or should be involved and how useful market systems are for government work.
I suppose those kinds of debates are good as it keeps us honest. But it also creates a bit of inefficiency because you may have a certain point of view while others have a different point of view. However this is almost always unspoken. So until something comes up or there is an assumption, mismatch or conflict even, we can establish where people sit on that philosophical spectrum.
If there was an easy way to either categorise people on what that looks like, I think that would save a lot of time. Similarly, even for impact investing investors, some people will be happy to sacrifice market rate returns while other people want really high returns. So even though they say they’re happy to sacrifice, when push comes to shove, maybe they don't. It’s this contrast in opinions that is a key inefficiency in this space, however I know it takes time.
“Speaking on the economic development side and impact investing in general, everybody carries their own philosophies on the extent to which the private sector could or should be involved and how useful market systems are for government work. I suppose those kinds of debates are good as it keeps us honest. But it also creates a bit of inefficiency because you may have a certain point of view while others have a different point of view.”
Q5: What do you think is the importance of impact investing? Why do you believe in it and why do you think it's the way to go?
“If you believe in social enterprise, then ideally there’s an ecosystem to support, fund and invest in those enterprises. It naturally should exist.”
I think it's like a natural offshoot. If you believe in social enterprise, then ideally there's an ecosystem to support, fund and invest in those enterprises. It naturally should exist. I also think that global NGOs like World Vision provide a big opportunity to invest in these enterprises, enabling us to connect with everyday Australians. This is not only through a philanthropic relationship, but through an investing relationship so that you can contribute and see what's happening on the ground.
So instead of creating a zero sum relationship where we are simply offloading money from Australia and giving it to somebody out of the goodness of our hearts, we can create a win-win scenario. So if we invest in a social enterprise overseas, we help them generate employment and income, which in turn provides us with some form of return. We’ll also benefit. So in a way, it’s self-perpetuating and it disrupts a lot of how we’ve been doing things before. To me, it’s exciting.
Gordon Chan - Senior New Business Advisor - World Vision Australia
Big thank you to Gordon Chan for taking the time to answer our questions.