Grunin Prize for Law and Social Entrepreneurship

The Grunin Center administers the Grunin Prize for Law and Social Entrepreneurship to celebrate the contributions of lawyers who purposefully engage in advancing the fields of social entrepreneurship, impact investing, and sustainable development.

The Grunin Center for Law and Social Entrepreneurship is made possible through a generous endowment from NYU School of Law graduates Jay Grunin ’67 and Linda Kalmanowitz Grunin ’67, and the Grunin Foundation. Jay and Linda have dedicated their philanthropic endeavors to investing in innovative projects that have measurable impacts creating meaningful, transformative change.

Grunin Prize Winner

IFC and Amartha: Women Focused Social Financing Solution

Nominated Legal Team:

IFC Legal (IFC’s in-house legal team): 

• Feng Lin
• Siqi Liu

Pinsent Masons (IFC’s external counsel, English and Singapore law):

• Martin Bishop
• Olivia Wang
• Darell Pang
• Scott Palmer

Jardin Legal (IFC’s external counsel, Indonesian law) 

• Jardin Bahar
• Riki Rakhmani
• Petra Sabrina

Trilexica (Amartha’s external counsel, Indonesian law):

• Safita Narthfilda
• Anggia Rukmasari
• Sofia Averilliana

The Project:

International Finance Corporation (“IFC”) and PT Amartha Mikro Finance (“Amartha”) launched an innovative financing solution (the “Facility”) to provide micro-finance loans to under-served female micro entrepreneurs in rural Indonesia.

The Facility’s structure uses many features of the loan book securitisation markets to create a bankable structure for the financing of a recycling portfolio of micro-loan receivables originated on Amatha’s P2P lending platform. With this structure, Amartha can tap financing, including from offshore impact investors, that could be scaled up to $206 million.

The key features of the structure include the following:

• the borrower is established as a special purpose vehicle in Singapore created specifically for the transaction.
• the borrower is maintained and operated by a professional corporate services provider based in Singapore for the benefit of the investors.
• the proceeds of the Facility will be used to finance micro-loans originated by Amartha in Indonesia through its P2P lending platform.
• the security for the Facility is the micro-loans and the related receivables.
• the Facility is not guaranteed by Amartha and recourse to Amartha is limited to the proceeds of the eligible micro-loan receivables.
• the Facility is, from Amartha’s perspective, an off-balance sheet transaction, and from the Investor’s perspective, provides protection of bankruptcy remoteness. 

To establish the Facility, IFC has committed funds from its own account as a cornerstone investor and has mobilized the balance from reputed international investors. By boosting access to finance for microenterprises, part of Indonesia's micro, small and medium sized (“MSME”) sector, IFC and Amartha will be supporting businesses that collectively employ tens of millions of people and make a key contribution to Indonesia's economy. The project has the potential to deepen Indonesia's capital markets by providing a demonstration effect that could spur similar investments, and to be replicated in some other jurisdictions in the future. 

Grunin Prize Finalists

Learn more about the finalists below:

California Wildfire Innovation Fund I, LP: Blue Forest Asset Management

Nominated Legal Team:

From Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe: 

• Perry Teicher
• Andrew Vogeler
• John Narducci
• Ramon Galvan
• Elizabeth Damaskos 

The Project:

Catastrophic wildfire is immensely costly to the state of California and its neighbors, decimating communities, placing millions of homes at risk, threatening public health, and emitting more carbon in some years than the state’s entire transportation sector. Landscape-scale forest restoration—the use of manual interventions to remove hazardous fuels, maintain forest structure, and restore forests to a more resilient state—is a proven way to reduce the risk of wildfire and its intensity when it does occur. 

By investing in private businesses that play a part in the forest restoration system, CWIF aims to move the needle on the pace and scale of forest restoration in the state. This includes companies performing restoration work on the ground, companies utilizing and up-valuing the byproducts (often referred to as ‘forest biomass’), and everything in between. The Fund is a novel model of mobilizing capital to meet this need, aligning a private insurance company in CSAA (motivated by the opportunity to invest its balance sheet in a way that stands to demonstrably reduce its risk exposure) and a California state instrumentality in IBank (motivated by public policy goals to catalyze private investment capital toward the wildfire challenge).

Justice Catalyst Access Fund: The Justice Note

Nominated Legal Team:

• Jacob Lipton, Justice Catalyst Access Fund
• Joshua Gewolb, Harter Secrest & Emery LLP
• Anthony Sebok, Cardozo School of Law
• Michael P. Kelley, Parker Poe Adams & Bernstein LLP

The Project:

Justice Access Catalyst Fund (JCAF) is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization that provides flexible, no-risk financial support to social impact litigators at scale. JCAF uses a unique financing contract template called the “Justice Note” that allows litigators at nonprofits and law firms to sustainably grow their public interest practices. The Justice Note is an innovative blended legal structure that fills the gap between philanthropic grant agreements and commercial litigation finance agreements in order to support the expansion of mission-driven public interest litigation. 

 

A distinctive, replicable, financially sustainable model, JCAF is highly scalable and poised for adoption across the United States and, eventually, worldwide. Public interest litigation is essential to enforcing accountability for wrongdoers and delivering justice for victims of civil legal rights violations. However, the demand for legal services far outweighs the available supply of nonprofit and public interest litigators and available funding. The social impact litigation sector has traditionally relied on one-way grant dollars for funding. Meanwhile the terms and business model of commercial litigation finance prices out the vast majority of public interest litigation. As a result, the social impact litigation sector has failed to leverage the robust potential of revenue-generating models from fee awards—thereby preventing public interest litigators from achieving the sector's potential for systemic impact that advances economic and social justice. 

 

The Justice Note is the first financing agreement designed specifically to address this need and to finance public interest litigation at scale at both nonprofit organizations and firms by applying the tools of litigation finance in a structure appropriate for social impact litigation. Already deployed within an evergreen fund to support hundreds of cases via portfolios at over two dozen organizations, the Justice Note is enabling philanthropic foundations and impact investors to support social impact litigation at scale, thereby empowering public interest litigators to carry out their vital missions.

New Majority Capital Fund: Leveraging Innovative Finance to Scale Inclusive Entrepreneurship

Nominated Legal Team:

From RPCK Rastegar Panchal LLP: 

• Chintan Panchal
• Joshua Teitelbaum
• Aaron Bourke

The Project:

The New Majority Capital Fund (NMC Fund) is a first-of-its-kind impact investment vehicle designed to empower historically underrepresented entrepreneurs—particularly Black, Latinx, and women business owners—by providing them with access to non-extractive impact capital and business acquisition opportunities, coupled with mentorship and an entrepreneurial support community. 

 

The fund addresses a critical gap in the market: while minority-owned businesses are a key driver of economic growth, historic and systemic barriers prevent many from acquiring or scaling businesses. The NMC Fund utilizes an innovative fund and capital deployment structure that integrates equity, debt, and catalytic capital as well as revenue based financing to finance the transition of small businesses to new, diverse ownership. 

 

From a legal perspective, this required a complex, multi-tiered structuring approach to blend different forms of capital while aligning risk-return expectations for investors. The fund incorporates mission-aligned governance, impact-linked financial incentives, and regulatory compliance strategies that enhance its scalability. By tackling racial and gender wealth gaps through business ownership, the NMC Fund is a pioneering model for impact-driven capital deployment. We hope the legal framework behind it sets a precedent for future funds aiming to use private equity and alternative financing structures for inclusive economic growth.

The Reinvesting in Nursing Education and Workforce Fund: ReNEW Fund

Nominated Legal Team:

From Social Finance, Inc.: 

• Leslie Cornell
• Chiara Apici
• Tyler Lewis

The Project:

The Reinvesting in Nursing Education and Workforce Fund (ReNEW Fund) is an initiative created by our organization, Social Finance, Inc., a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and Western Governors University (WGU) to address the healthcare talent crisis facing the United States. Seeded with an initial $10 million investment from WGU, ReNEW Fund is designed to support aspiring nurses—particularly those from historically underserved communities—by offering students enrolled in WGU’s nursing pre-licensure program 0% interest private education loans (Loans) to make the WGU nursing program accessible to those who otherwise would be unable to afford it. A key feature of the Loans is their unique repayment structure, designed to be both student-friendly and aligned with graduate financial success. Student borrowers must repay their Loans only when they are earning a yearly income above $60,000, ensuring that repayments are manageable and tied to the individual’s ability to translate training into higher earnings.

 

One of the unique and most impactful aspects of ReNEW Fund is its employer repayment model. ReNEW Fund employs a model under which it receives fee-based compensation directly from employers (similar to a placement agent) for graduates who have been placed with such employers, and applies the payments to the Loan obligations for those who have them and gives direct payments to graduates who have not received the Loan. These employer contributions not only reduce student debt or increase direct cash to employees but, because employers make both hiring and retention payments, also serve as a financial incentive for employees to remain employed with specific employers. By linking Loan repayment or cash disbursement to continued employment, the program enhances employee retention—a key challenge in the healthcare industry, where turnover rates are high and the demand for skilled nurses is ever-growing. Finally, ReNEW Fund has a recycling mechanism that amplifies the impact of both philanthropic capital and employer repayments. When students and employers make Loan payments, those funds flow back into the fund and directly support students in future cohorts. This recycling ensures that the initiative is sustainable and can continue to grow over time, increasing the program’s reach and charitable impact. With this structure, ReNEW Fund addresses the immediate needs of today’s students and creates a long-term solution to the nation’s nursing workforce shortage.

2025 Judging Panel

• Deborah K. Burand
• Jay Grunin
• Helen Scott
• Rachel F. Robbins
• Steve Valdes-Robles
• Amélie Baudot