We get to know Nathalie Whitaker, co-founder and CEO of New Zealand Impact Investment Marketplace, Toha.
Small Giants Academy: Tell us about Toha and your approach to impact investing.
Natalie Whitaker: We believe impact investing has the power to cool the planet. At present though, global green finance is trickling in billions rather than the trillions the planet urgently needs.
Toha’s purpose is to unlock these global trillions and enable impact investment to scale down to the frontline – fuelling grassroots change and environmental action to regenerate our land, water and communities.
For me and my fellow co-founders, Toha was the next logical step in careers that have been dedicated to making an impact. Our work has involved founding New Zealand’s first crowdfunding platform (givealittle.co.nz), establishing the New Zealand research centre of excellence for complex systems (Te Pūnaha Mataitini) and building groundbreaking impact visualisation software (Takiwā).
The Toha platform is designed to deliver financial returns from investment to restore a healthy environment. Our data-driven, science-backed approach mobilises citizen scientists and harnesses tech to create the necessary trust and sidestep the planetary dead end of greenwashing.
With the ability to build new markets for verifiable environmental outcomes, we all win and the planet wins.
What is your theory of change?
At Toha, we believe there is a shift emerging globally from an extractive to a regenerative economic model. We place ourselves smack bang in the middle of the messy, discordant intersection between these old and new worlds because this is the most fertile ground for the innovation and creativity required to create systemic change.
Our theory of change is that a better future will be redesigned through reconnecting with nature, harnessing grassroots cooperation and embracing all the bodies of knowledge and indigenous wisdom from our past. Through this lens we are building a mighty network of entrepreneurs, communities, investors, scientists and technology specialists so that collectively we can steward in a new economic model that places the regeneration of our planet at its centre.
What does climate action look like for you?
Grassroots initiatives. Work with land. Returning to simpler models of living and production. People getting out of bed each day to do work that makes a measurable difference for the environment and their communities.
We passionately believe that the solutions the planet needs can be enabled by properly funding and rewarding the people on the frontline, and not waiting for the tech to save us. Nature based solutions are ready to scale right now. This becomes possible when impact investment dollars can be deployed efficiently and effectively, earning real returns in the process.
Tell us about some of your regenerative business practices.
As Maori tech leaders, we’ve designed an investment platform that bakes in kaitiakitanga (stewardship of land) and kotahitanga (oneness) directly into the design.
Our process is also big on compassion as a precondition for mindset change – we believe every organisation and individual, regardless of their past green credentials, needs to see the role they can play in returning our environment to its most resilient state.
And in our business model, we’ve been very careful to make sure that our own sustainability aligns directly with growing levels of demonstrable climate action and verifiable proof of regenerative outcomes.
What does the next economy look and feel like to you, and how can more of us get there?
Right now, our citizens, communities and industries are ready to create significant change for the environment but need new resourcing models to value this work. Governments and financiers are grappling with increasing climate risk and need new tools beyond regulation to inspire responsibility. Those with scale finance to deploy are struggling to scale down their investment to reach the frontline efficiently, make a verifiable impact or deliver financial return.
Collectively, we’re failing to put a healthy natural environment at the centre of our economic future. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
With Toha, we’ve harnessed technology and scientific measurement to create data assets from environmental action. We’re creating the platform in which to build, measure, fund and trade these assets – providing investors with real financial returns never seen before. Through Toha, we can make financial returns on impactful action the new normal; and direct the global trillions of green finance to the initiatives making a difference.
We’re poised for our next capital round and for something as big as Toha it’s quite an overwhelming task. We’re building a bridge between two economies and so by startup standards we need significant resources.
My crowdfunding background gives me confidence that Toha can be crowdfunded into existence, as lots of small contributions make the difference. However, we need to go as fast as we possibly can so those with the resources to accelerate us can be the heroes of this story.
