Governance That Empowers

Services

FIGURE80 supports investors, donors and companies to maximise social and environmental impact through modernizing governance and recentering business strategies across their portfolios and pipelines.

FIGURE80 draws on extensive experience of serving low-income consumers in emerging markets to provide tools, techniques and tailored advice from design through to implementation and measurement. 

GOVERNANCE

Building modern, dynamic governance: Board and C-suite combinations that deliver true competitive advantage:

  • Providing personalized, time bound & interactive programmes to transform governance

  • Finding the Board composition that helps deliver the strategy and truly adds value

  • Building Board/management models that empower teams whilst creating accountability

  • Developing Chair/CEO partnerships that provide the foundation for organisational growth

BUSINESS STRATEGY

Sharpening, recentering or re-imagining business strategy:

  • Ensuring a long-term vision with the potential for high impact and scale

  • Ensuring products/services meet consumer demand, with systems which capture the voice of the customers

  • Building high-performance senior management teams, with appropriate skills and deep engagement

  • Securing the right capital for growth

  • Measuring, maximising and communicating SDG contributions

Clients

We provide services to high impact businesses and to the impact investors, donors, foundations and corporates who fund them.

The world is counting on business to make a critical contribution to achieving the SDGs. Recognising this, funders are committing more resources than ever to building portfolios of enterprises and social intermediaries that deliver lasting impact in the lives of low-income consumers, whilst finding low carbon pathways to economic growth. However, funders struggle to find the pipeline of investible businesses which deliver great social impact, whilst demonstrating governance, management and business strategies that ensure sustainability. Equally, funders of not-for-profit organisations which help to build inclusive markets, often do not see the quality of governance and business strategy that will ensure sustainability.

Governance and business strategy

The Founder

Sam Parker has been working with entrepreneurs and investors for over 20 years. With a background of 16 years in international business, Sam was an early pioneer of market-based approaches to development. During 8 years serving as CEO of Water & Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP) and 7 years as CEO of Shell Foundation, Sam coached over 150 entrepreneurs operating in emerging markets, helping them to strengthen governance and find the innovations needed to extend services to previously underserved consumers, delivering both business viability and impact.

Sam has served as adviser and Board member of multiple enterprises and not-for-profit intermediaries which contribute to the SDGs, in 2014 earning a Skoll Foundation Award for Social Entrepreneurship. Sam has worked across sectors, developing a deep understanding of non-for-profit governance and strategy as Organisational Development Manager at the International Save the Children Alliance. As entrepreneur coach, investor and funder, Sam has an extensive knowledge of organisational development and the key factors for success, as well as a track record of building effective alliances between enterprises, civil society and public sector.

Sam believes that successful impact investing depends on a deep understanding of the needs of the consumer and the challenges faced by the entrepreneurs who serve them. This understanding can only be achieved if enterprises have modern, dynamic governance and clearly focused business strategies.

In 2021, Sam founded FIGURE80 to support high impact businesses build stronger governance and business strategies, drawing on his wide network of associates with expertise in governance and strategy to meet the needs of each client. In this way, FIGURE80 will help to unlock the power of enterprise to build a more inclusive and sustainable world!

Governance and business strategy for greater impact

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