Erié Foundation in collaboration with Telos Impact ›

What is systemic investing?

Systemic investing is an investment approach that seeks to address complex social and environmental challenges by targeting the underlying systems that generate these issues (Centre for Sustainable Finance and Private Wealth, 2025).

At a glance

A single foundation deploys different catalytic instruments to support mental health in a systemic way.

Since 2019, Telos Impact has been advising a family in the creation and development of the Erié Foundation. Telos Impact supports investors, philanthropists, companies, foundations, and public institutions in turning their ambitions into measurable social and environmental outcomes. With mental health at the heart of its mission, Erié Foundation aims to develop and bring about an innovative and ambitious vision of mental health care. To achieve this goal, the Foundation supports projects that strengthen prevention, early diagnosis and care, and a full integration into society for people with mental health conditions, while also supporting research, de-stigmatisation, and advocacy efforts that can translate on-the-ground learning into broader public policy change.

Taking a pioneering stance in France and Belgium with a European perspective, the family has intentionally chosen to mobilise catalytic capital in their philanthropic activities, deploying different instruments across the impact finance spectrum (as defined by IFB) to support systemic change in mental health.

A systemic strategy

Since its creation in 2019, the Erié Foundation has relied on an ambitious and systemic strategy, developed together with a network of renowned international experts. Their strategy include following traits of a systemic investing approach:

• Intentionality: The foundation has made a commitment to highlight daily ‘on the ground’ experiences and act as an advocate for changes in public policy that will lead to better mental health for all.
• A strategy for systems change: facilitating the earliest possible care, changing therapeutic practices, better integration of people with mental disorders into everyday life and changing how mental illness is perceived.
• Use of polycapital: financial through grants and investments, social through leveraging their ecosystem and intellectual through sharing of expertise.
• Long term horizon: financial support is generally spread over several years, allowing projects to stabilize and thus develop and maximise their impact.
• Mindset shift: moves from a narrow, problem-by-problem view to a holistic view of how the system functions.

Three complementary investments in the mental health care system

Matching grant to the Institute for Child and Adolescent Developmental Pathologies (IDEAL)

At one end of the spectrum, Erié Foundation uses grants as an ‘impact-only’ instrument which can generate catalytic effects when disbursed subject to specific conditions. An example is the use of matching grants by Erié Foundation, which leverages additional funding by requiring contributions from other donors before releasing the next tranche of funding. Erié Foundation used this approach to support the construction of the Institute for Child and Adolescent Developmental Pathologies (IDEAL) at the Armand-Trousseau AP-HP hospital in Paris. Led by Professor David Cohen, the IDEAL project consolidates child and adolescent psychiatry services within a leading European paediatric centre, creating an environment conducive to medical and academic synergies, particularly with neonatology, neuropediatrics, emergency care, adolescent medicine, and clinical genetics teams. Erié Foundation was among the first major donors in 2021, supporting the project through a matching grant covering part of the total 40 million budget, with Telos Impact providing support throughout the process. This matching grant created a dual catalytic effect. First, the size and early timing of the donation signalled Erié Foundation’s trust in the project and helped unlock additional public and private funding. Second, the matching mechanism boosted fundraising momentum by increasing the leverage on other donors’ contributions, as donors knew their donation would be matched. Ultimately, the matching grant proved to be as a win-win: it allowed Erié Foundation to play a clear catalytic role by accelerating and de-risking the fundraising effort, while enabling the IDEAL project team to secure broader support and move forward with strengthened credibility and momentum.

Social Impact Bond to Déclic Emploi

Beyond grants, Erié Foundation has also mobilised outcome-based instruments to help bridge public and private funding, notably through a Social Impact Bond (SIB). Erié Foundation participated as a social investor in the programme Déclic Emploi, a proximity-based coaching programme designed to facilitate both access to, and sustained retention in, employment for individuals experiencing psychological vulnerabilities. Its target group includes people whose mental health fragilities make stable and durable employment in the open labour market difficult to reach or maintain. Structured by KOIS, the SIB runs over 2023-2026 with a total budget of 3.2 million. Investor repayments are performance-based and made by the French State via the Ministère du Travail, de l’Emploi et de l’Insertion, based on predefined outcome metrics and a set payment schedule. Three outcomes are used to determine payments:

(i) the number of beneficiaries supported, (ii) the rate of participants progressing in the steps to remove barriers to employment, and (iii) the rate of positive exits towards employment.

Transformation Associés serves as an independent impact measurement partner to ensure robust monitoring and evaluation. Follow-up and governance are ensured through steering committees, bringing together key stakeholders, including government representatives and Erié Foundation. As of 2026, the project has already achieved two out of three objectives and is on track to reach the third, which has enabled a first repayment tranche to be made to investors. While the Déclic Emploi SIB illustrates how outcome-based models can work effectively, Telos Impact highlights several structural limitations of the model: long-term sustainability remains constrained when the programme is not absorbed by government services after the SIB ends. Furthermore, the SIB mechanism requires implementing organisations to have a relatively mature internal structure due to the heavy measurement, reporting, and governance workload. These findings reflect a growing call for more flexible models that allow for deeper involvement of stakeholders closest to the issue, such as more local SIBs anchored with corporates, schools, or hospitals.

Equity investment in Think Film fund

Further along the impact finance spectrum, Erié Foundation is pursuing its first impact investing transaction through a fund investment. The investment is being pursued in Europe’s leading Impact Film Fund, Think Film, manifesting a new vision for film and impact. Films, in combination with structured impact campaigns to bolster stakeholder outreach, can accelerate changes in perception, influence socio-political behaviours, and even contribute to lasting policy change, as illustrated by films such as The Territory. This approach is particularly relevant in the field of mental health, where shifting narratives and public understanding is a key lever for systemic change, and therefore aligns with Erié Foundation’s pioneering approach. The fund targets a medium-to-high risk profile and aims to produce five films, returns are expected to be generated through royalties. A key specificity is that the films are supported by European Impact Company, which brings specialist expertise in leveraging artistic works to drive social change, ensuring that the movies will obtain the impact of their potential. Erié Foundation entered the fund as an anchor investor, having committed ahead of other investors whose participation is still being finalised. This first-mover positioning carries an elevated risk profile, yet it also reinforces the catalytic nature of Erié Foundation’s participation: by signalling credibility at an early stage, it helps build trust and confidence among prospective co-investors.

The investment in the THINK-FILM Impact Film Fund marks the first step in Erié Foundation’s broader reflection on how to further develop its investment strategy. Building on this initial experience, the Foundation intends to move beyond investing in third-party funds and, over time, explore the creation of its own ‘impact-first’ fund employing different vehicles, deepening its holistic ambition to support mental health in a systemic manner. Erié Foundation’s goal is to cover the full impact finance spectrum (as defined by IFB) and to bring a pioneering, venture-capital-inspired approach through patient capital, notably via investments in mental health tech. By deploying patient capital and assuming the associated risk, the Foundation has a significant opportunity to play a catalytic role in enabling innovations and attracting additional investors.

Are the investments catalytic?

The table below evaluates whether the 3 investments can be considered as catalytic capital, meaning whether they have accepted a disproportionate risk and/or a concessionary return in order to create positive impact and mobilise third party investment.

It is clear from the table above that Erié Foundation is deploying an ambitious impact-first investing strategy accepting disproportionate risk and/or concessionary returns with a systems lens. However, only the matching grant and Déclic Emploi can be considered as catalytic since they also mobilised third party investments.