On April 2, MDIF’s Chief Strategy Officer, Patrice Schneider, joined the Impact Fire Talks series hosted by FASE, a European impact finance advisor focused on enabling access to capital for social enterprises.
In his talk on “Is Democracy a Compelling Investment Case?”, Patrice highlighted the essential role of independent media in upholding democratic resilience. He also spoke about how concessional, mission-aligned capital can counter the global rise in authoritarianism by strengthening civic infrastructure and ensuring access to trustworthy information.
Pioneers Post, an independent news network for the global impact community, reported Patrice’s call for a broader interpretation of impact and how that can be achieved by a ‘Third Way’ of media investing. He said, “Public funding poses challenges, because we know that when the governments get involved in the media, it has an impact. We can’t only use the market because for 20 years the digital disruption has completely broken the business model of public interest information…. So it’s going to have to be a third way.”
Read the full Pioneers Post report on Patrice’s talk here: https://www.pioneerspost.com/news-views/20250407/how-impact-investors-can-support-democracy-thrive