About Visa Foundation
Approach and strategy

In April 2020, Visa Foundation launched the Equitable Access Initiative, a five-year, $200 million strategic commitment to support gender diverse and inclusive SMBs around the world. As a part of the initiative, we will provide $60 million in grants and $140 million in impact investments with a gender and diversity lens.
Visa Foundation believes that creating a capital continuum for SMBs is crucial for their sustainability and growth. As such, Visa Foundation aims to increase equitable and efficient access to capital at different stages of business growth, support gender diverse and inclusive small businesses, and promote inclusive economic growth. An additional goal is to influence the sector broadly to help move gender lens investing from niche to the mainstream.
Through its grantmaking, Visa Foundation partners with organizations that provide capital, capacity building and support services to gender inclusive and diverse SMBs. Additionally, Visa Foundation uses grant funding to unlock barriers that prevent the flow of investment capital from reaching gender diverse SMBs.
Visa Foundation’s commitment to investing $140 million into intermediaries and funds globally is primarily focused on emerging markets, with a gender lens across the entire portfolio from SMB borrowers up to venture capital partners. The goal is to increase the number of women who control capital, the number of women entrepreneurs who can access that capital, and the number of women who benefit from those businesses as employees or customers.
Programs and partnerships

Financially empowering millions of women-led micro and small businesses (SMBs) globally.
Over 5 years, the program aims to develop, test, and scale financial services to SMBs across a global network of partners while driving learning and insights to advance economic stability for women and their families. Since the start of our partnership in 2018, Women’s World Banking has reached 1.15 million women with a financial solution and expanded their global Network in 32 countries, reaching 69 million women.

Creating employment opportunities for rural youth in Africa by designing a network of innovative and integrated agribusiness hubs to build entrepreneurial capacity and technical/managerial skills.
The envisaged outcomes include creating decent employment opportunities for youth with a focus on green jobs, realizing policy shifts, and enabling other development actors to scale up wholly or parts of this model.

Running accelerators to close the financing gap facing underserved entrepreneurs in Latin America, with a focus on food and agriculture innovation.
This program will build on Village Capital’s Women’s Entrepreneurship Acceleration Initiative, a collaboration between the International Finance Corporation, the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative, and the World Bank Gender Innovation Lab.

A racial equity and entrepreneurship initiative launched by producer and entrepreneur Pharrell Williams and partnering with Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
The initiative will provide Black and Latinx entrepreneurs with access to capital, mentors and resources. Prizes will be awarded each year at a national event.

Providing global insights and trends for structured private equity, venture capital, and private debt vehicles with a gender lens.
Project Sage seeks to understand the state of the gender lens investing field. The report is a tool for investors, fund managers and individuals moving capital to align with their commitment to women. Project Sage is researched and published by Wharton Social Impact Initiative and Catalyst at Large.

Strengthening the gender diversity of local farmer cooperatives and their institutional capacity to make them resilient to economic shocks.
Over the three-year initiative, TechnoServe has increased the revenues of farmer cooperatives in India by 113% by providing women with critical business skills, creating market linkages and introducing alternative income generating activities.

Accelerating investment into diverse emerging fund managers in the United States.
VC Include drives returns to investors while also shaping a more equitable and empowered world. The VC Include BIPOC Fellowship for First-Time Fund Managers, the first of its kind, supports the next generation of high performing, Black, LatinX, Indigenous and women-led venture capital and impact funds to drive economic growth in new markets.
Other partners include













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News and announcements
March 24, 2023
Red Cross recognizes Visa and Visa Foundation as 2023 Red Cross Philanthropic Company of the Year
A committed partner of the Red Cross for more than 33 years, Visa and Visa Foundation have supported people impacted by disasters with the resources they need. Visa Foundation allows the organization to have response tools at the ready before disaster strikes, as an Annual Disaster Giving Pledge member. Together with our employees, who also dedicate time and resources to local Red Cross programs, we have donated more than $30 million in support of Red Cross disaster response.

May 13, 2022
Visa Foundation Commits $12 Million to a New Tipping Point Community Program Addressing Youth Homelessness in the San Francisco Bay Area
Visa Foundation announced a $12 million grant to Tipping Point Community, a nonprofit organization committed to fighting poverty in the San Francisco Bay Area. Visa Foundation will partner with Tipping Point and its community network to direct these funds to impactful local service providers in Bay Area neighborhoods with the goal of driving lasting change in the lives of youth.

December 16, 2020
Visa and Visa Foundation Extend Support of Minority-led Small Businesses
Building on Visa’s long-term commitment to this community, Visa Foundation today announced new initiatives to provide nearly $5 million in capital to minority-led SMBs, amid a second wave of COVID-19.

April 6, 2020
Visa Foundation Commits $210 Million to Support Small and Micro Businesses and Immediate COVID-19 Emergency Relief
Visa Foundation recently announced a commitment of two programs totaling $210 million to support small and micro businesses, aligning with Visa Foundation’s long-term focus on women’s economic advancement and inclusive economic development, and to address an urgent need from local communities following the spread of COVID-19.
More news and announcements
- Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) Teams Up with PayPal, TELUS Pollinator Fund, and Visa Foundation to Launch Corporate Impact Investing Initiative
- VC Include Announces 2022 Cohort for Fellowship of BIPOC First-Time Fund Managers
- Beacon announces an anchor investment from Visa Foundation to unlock more gender lens investments in emerging Southeast Asia
- Ford Foundation, Visa Foundation, and Fairview Capital join forces to invest in diverse venture capital and private equity firms
- Visa Foundation announces regional grantees of its $10 million COVID-19 emergency relief fund
- Visa Launches Foundation with Inaugural Grant to Women's World Banking
- Visa Foundation Board Appoints Graham Macmillan as President of the Visa Foundation
- ANDE, United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Visa Foundation partner to launch Gender Equality Initiative
- Visa Foundation donates $4.5 million to help fight homelessness and poverty in the Bay Area
Meet the team

Graham Macmillan
President

Najada Kumbuli
Head of Investments

Payal Pathak
Program Officer

Abishkar Shrestha
Investment Officer

Isabelle Rodas
Grants Manager

Chukwudi Onike
Program Officer

Grisaldy Lantigua
Operations and Strategic Initiatives Manager

Deborah Gordon
Program Analyst
Visa Foundation does not accept unsolicited proposals.