History and mission of The Meloy Fund
The Meloy Fund for Sustainable Community Fisheries* was launched in 2017 by Rare, a global conservation organization dedicated to inspiring communities to adopt behaviors that protect natural resources that sustain them. Rare, as a mission-driven NGO, acts as the General Partner and Deliberate Capital, LLC, is the fund manager.
The Meloy Fund has been a first-of-its-kind impact investment fund, focused on proving the triple bottom line viability of investing in fishing and seafood-related enterprises that will lead to better management and protection of these formerly under-appreciated and undervalued natural assets. Working in the Philippines and Indonesia, the Meloy Fund is disrupting traditional local supply chain ecosystems to provide opportunities to local fishers to secure more sustainable livelihoods.
The Meloy Fund has been at the forefront of innovation for impact investment funds, notably recruiting a hands-on Impact Committee; creating a robust complementary technical assistance facility that brings focused grant funding to augment capital investments for each investee company; creating new impact measurement dashboard tracking; and supply chain traceability
The Meloy Fund was founded and launched by Rare,
a global conservation organization dedicated to inspiring communities to adopt behaviors that protect the natural resources that sustain them. Acting as the General Partner (GP) for the Meloy Fund, Rare partners with Deliberate Capital to manage the Fund.
The Meloy Fund’s primary objectives are to:
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Transform businesses: Support SMEs that impact coastal ecosystems, including those involved in wild-caught seafood, mariculture, and aquaculture supply chains, in an effort to modernize their operations, improve their ESG characteristics, help them expand into new markets, and implement value-added processes that reduce costs and/or improve revenues for local fishers.
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Transform supply chains: Ensure that supply chains support a pathway to coastal natural resource sustainability, including enabling technologies (fintech, agtech, traceability, etc.), cold chain infrastructure, green (ocean-friendly) materials and waste management, and more sustainable inputs (e.g., feed and gear).
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Transform sectors: Pursue sector-building investments such as market platforms, creative financing to reduce indebtedness and increase equity for fishers, certification and labeling schemes, climate-smart adaptations, and more.
How The Meloy Fund was named​​
The Meloy Fund is named after Meloy, a Panther Grouper who was the mascot in one of Rare's Pride campaigns in Inabanga, Philippines. The campaign, which started in 2011, is focused on community ownership and participation in protecting Inabanga's marine resources.
