Katerina Kimmorley epitomises the young breed of entrepreneurs - passionate, motivated and socially aware. She talks about what it means to be philanthropic and why social giving is the right thing to do.

Social conscience comes in many forms. It can be as simple as making an informed decision about ethically sourced food at the supermarket, or helping fund raise for a cause, or volunteering your skills and time to a not-for-profit charity.

And then there’s Katerina Kimmorley, who at the age of 24, was so shocked at the living conditions of the urban poor in India, that she decided to make a difference herself. It’s a remarkable story of inspiration, self-sacrifice and self-belief that Katerina touched upon at last year’s Women in Wealth breakfast at the FPA Professionals Congress in Hobart.

But to understand Katerina’s story, you need to first understand the underlying values that drive this extraordinary entrepreneur.

Katerina says she has always had a sense of social justice, crediting her family upbringing and schooling for instilling this quality within her. At school, she became the captain of social justice, where she was involved with many charities.

From there, she graduated to university, where, amongst other disciplines, Katerina studied photovoltaic engineering (that’s solar renewable energy to the rest of us!), when in 2012, she was able to put her studies to some serious practice.

“We went to India to help a friend, who had set up a charity to raise money to build an orphanage in Bangalore. My friend built the orphanage with the funds raised but the children couldn’t study because they didn’t have access to lights. As I was working in renewable energy at the time, I knew there was an opportunity for me to help out the orphanage.”

Urban poor

But the level and extent of poverty in India was something that deeply upset Katerina.

“The poverty in India is omnipresent. It was particularly distressing in city slums. There you would have slum houses with tarpaulin sheets covering the roofs, sitting next door to high tech business parks and more affluent residential areas.

“And the scale of poverty in India is massive,” she says. “There are currently 65 million people living in urban slums in India, and this number is rapidly growing. Conditions in these slums are often unfit for people to live in, and their basic needs, like access to clean water and lighting, are simply missing.”

According to Katerina, many of these slums are not connected to grid electricity or mains water supply, forcing people to go without, or to resort to unsafe products. Families rely on harmful kerosene for their lighting needs, they drink unclean water, and cook with dirty cookstoves.

“Sadly, most families are not educated about the better alternatives out there. They have no way to access them, and no idea how these alternatives could be used to improve their lives,” Katerina says. “And due to their low earning and transitory nature, families living in slums have no access to finance to enable them to purchase the products they need.”

It was this deprivation of basic living conditions that proved the catalyst for Katerina to conduct research into providing solar lights for India’s slums, which after overcoming many challenges, led her to set up Pollinate Energy in 2012. This, she says, was her entrée to the world of philanthropy.

End-to-end solution

“At first, we thought that solving this energy need would simply be a matter of rolling out a technology solution. But we quickly realised it wasn’t a technology problem. There were plenty of existing solar lighting solutions available. The problem was, we had no distribution or financing mechanism in place to enable us to implement our solar light solution.”

And so, Katerina and her team approached various micro-financing organisations in India but were repeatedly knocked back, as these micro-financers considered people living in slums to be “too poor” and “too risky” to deal with.

“So, we quickly realised that we had to provide a whole end-to-end solution, which was technology, distribution and financing. Essentially, three businesses in one. It took a lot of trial and error, but that’s how we developed Pollinate Energy.”

In setting up and running Pollinate Energy, Katerina wanted to maintain an arm’s-length relationship with the Indian Government, so she didn’t seek any support from it, and the Australian Government doesn’t provide donor support to India.

“So, to help with the financing, we reached out far and wide. In fact, we were the first organisation to go on Australia’s first crowd-funding website, where we raised $10,000. Since then, we have received huge levels of support from multiple corporates across Australia, as well as high-net-worth philanthropic support. But our core donor support still comes from individuals, including friends and family, who help us out financially on a monthly basis.”

The other part of the Pollinate Energy model that is somewhat unique is that it runs a ‘fellowship’ program, where the organisation brings over to India young professionals and university students, who undertake a two week program with Pollinate Energy. As part of this fellowship, these individuals also raise money to launch one of the organisation’s entrepreneurs – known as Pollinators – which Katerina says has been an effective co-financing mechanism.

The ‘Pollinators’ serve as the organisation’s distribution arm and play a vital role in Pollinate Energy’s success. They are the entrepreneurs recruited from the urban poor who sell durable, quality products, like Pollinate’s solar lanterns, improved cookstoves, solar fans and water filters, to families living in slum communities. This face-to-face distribution network allows the organisation to build relationships and trust with its customers.

“It also means we gain regular feedback about the performance of our products and the needs of the families we serve, so we can keep providing the right products at the right price,” Katerina says.

But if the products are sold, how can the urban poor afford to purchase them?

It’s a solution that Pollinate Energy has overcome by offering all its customers short-term payment plans to make the products affordable. The rate of defaults on these plans is less than 1 per cent, with all products coming with a minimum one year warranty and post-sale servicing.

“This model allows families to save 15 per cent of their income, thereby enabling them to improve their health, safety and quality of life,” says Katerina.

Life-changing

Today, Pollinate Energy has supplied over 27,200 environmentally efficient products, reaching over 123,600 individuals and servicing 970 communities in India. It’s a remarkable achievement in just six years.

The organisation has set itself a mission based on three principles:

• Improve the lives of India’s urban poor by giving them access to sustainable products that make their lives better.
• Empower local Indian entrepreneurs to be a positive force for change in India’s urban poor communities (Pollinators).
• Make social business mainstream by raising awareness about the communities Pollinate Energy works with and supporting the next generation of social entrepreneurs.

“Pollinate Energy has a vision of a world where all communities have equal access to life-changing products, like lighting, that improve their lives,” Katerina says. “To get there, we have five key goals that we are striving to achieve.”

These five goals are:

1. Expanding the organisation’s solution to impact as many lives as possible;
2. Positively impacting families living in slums by providing life-changing products, and encouraging manufacturers and service providers to work with Pollinate Energy in achieving this mission;
3. Creating a movement of social leaders through its Fellowship programs;
4. Being an employer of choice; and
5. Creating growth paths for the Pollinators to enable them to take on new challenges.

“But at Pollinate Energy, it’s not just about what we aim to do, but also about how we do it. We have very clear values that we use to make decisions, build our strategy, and drive the company,” Katerina says. “These values include: accountability, transparency, sustainability, practicality and awareness – it’s vitally important that we listen to our customers and Pollinators when making decisions.”

Awareness

While still involved with Pollinate Energy, these days, Katerina is concentrating her efforts on her current role as Associate Director of the Innovation Fund at the Clean Energy Finance Corporation – a role she has held for the past 18 months.

In her role with the Innovation Fund, she is part of the process that decides which clean tech businesses in Australia to invest in – an often difficult task. But it’s through this role and her continuing involvement with Pollinate Energy that the 30-year-old is buoyed to see the rapidly growing interest and uptake of philanthropic investing and in social justice causes by more Australians.

“This interest is coming right across the broader Australian community,” Katerina says. “The Baby Boomer generation is starting to become quite active with social justice causes and philanthropy. I think people assume this generation is conservative but I disagree. They have built up substantial wealth and want to leave a legacy, not just an inheritance for their children. It’s exciting to see them pair their activism with their investments.”

And what about the younger generations?

“With younger Australians, I’m definitely seeing a lot more ‘values-based’ investing. Whether it’s in high tech, or green technology, or social impact, we’re seeing Gen X and Millennials choosing their investments, like superannuation, to be invested in areas where it’s making a beneficial social and environmental impact.

“It’s great to see new investing opportunities that are providing Australians with more scope to make money on their investments whilst doing social good, which is very exciting, but we need to see more retail offerings come to market to meet this growing demand,” she says.

“If you look at some of the big global, social and environmental issues, there’s a definite gap between investible opportunities and opportunities that don’t necessarily have a commercial return on the investment but have huge social and environmental implications.

“If we want to create a world where we can all flourish, then we need to be investing in those opportunities philanthropically. There is a huge role that Australians can play by looking at their investments and also considering participating in either Private Ancillary Funds or Public Ancillary Funds, in order to make a beneficial social and environmental impact.”

That’s where Katerina believes financial planners can play a key contributing role in growing the awareness of philanthropic giving amongst their clients and the wider community.

“I’m a big supporter of Private Ancillary Funds and Public Ancillary Funds. Clients can use the corpus to make impact investments that make a return and then give 4 per cent of funds to distribute to philanthropic causes. It’s is a great tax-effective way of giving back, especially if you have had a capital event like selling a business or property,” she says.

“And, of course, the other way is to just get involved with causes that you care about, whether it’s at a board level or at a volunteer level. It all makes a difference.”

To demonstrate the point, Katerina says Pollinate Energy has had “hundreds” of students and young professionals work with the organisation in India, using their skills to support the charitable initiative.

“This has been hugely beneficial for us, allowing us to expand into other states in India and new product areas, which we just couldn’t have done otherwise. So, philanthropy isn’t just about financial aid. It works in so many ways, like volunteering your skills and time. It’s about mobilising your passion and purpose, and applying that to all the great charitable organisations out there.”

Future

To say the last six years have been frenetic for Katerina would be an understatement. After all, it’s not every day you create a social business enterprise, responsible for the strategic direction, business planning, management and oversight of over 80 staff, as well as board members and stakeholders. So, what’s next for this enterprising young leader?

“My aim has always been to work at the nexus of climate change and poverty. So, for me right now with my role at the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, if we can get more money to back these innovative and environmentally progressive organisations, it will go a long way in reducing, and perhaps even solving, catastrophic climate change.

“I’m really focused on trying to leverage as much private and philanthropic capital as possible, to grow the environmentally sustainable sector and to build the future of tomorrow.”

But although she might have her feet currently in the corporate world, her heart remains entrepreneurial.

“I will always be an entrepreneur,” Katerina says. “As long as we are growing a cleaner and greener future, then I’ll be happy to get up and go to work every morning.”