Insaan believes that the current global philanthropic landscape is characterized by a philanthropic impact gap: the gap between the increase in philanthropic giving globally, generated by an exponential increase in private wealth, and the unfulfilled potential for a proportional impact on beneficiaries’ lives due to systemic factors in the charitable industry. These include: fragmentation in the competitive charity industry, drainage, lack of emphasis on results for end-users/beneficiaries, short funding cycles, absence of stakeholder involvement in governance and lack of measurement tools and requirements on impact and social return. Moreover, charitable giving often creates parallel structures that bypass governmental priorities creating unintended inefficiencies, duplication and unsustainable thinking around projects with potential adverse consequences on beneficiaries.

Insaan is a response to these systemic weaknesses. Insaan hopes to create public value by: (a) professionalizing the selection, management, monitoring and performance management of philanthropic giving for clients, (b) enabling high impact ventures to access long-term, flexible capital and advice to propel them to a higher stage of growth and performance and (c) placing the end-users or beneficiaries at the center of philanthropy by measuring success and efficiency of philanthropic giving through real impact on the world’s poorest.