Dwight Poler is deeply committed to steering capital toward building a better world. For nearly a quarter-century he was part of the leadership of Bain Capital, where he founded and managed the European Private Equity Business and remains a senior advisor. Dwight founded and now manages AccelR8, an impact fund investing to accelerate the reduction and sequestration of greenhouse gasses causing climate change.
Dwight understands where the true levers of change are found. “I may have resources,” he says, “but I’ve realized over time, with experience and New Profit’s help, that I’m not close enough to the lived experiences of the challenges I seek to address.” To get closer, he became a lead investor in New Profit’s Inclusive Impact strategy and Proximate Capital Fund. Those initiatives were designed to drive unprecedented capital toward some of our nation’s most promising innovators: those who center equity in their work and are meaningfully guided by the communities they aim to serve.
Dwight is highly attuned to the complexity of the intertwining crises affecting our democracy’s vitality, from education to racial wealth gaps to social justice. He also recognizes that there are visionary, talented social entrepreneurs living and working close to these issues who are better positioned to define the challenges and propose solutions. “Those who are blessed with resources need to engage differently, learning to delegate agency and empower those most proximate to these inequities to define and deliver effective change.”
Engaging differently means more than simply funding differently. It means thinking differently. That can mean questioning the inherent bias in the solutions we’ve historically supported, which tend to come from the top down. “I have become less likely to support initiatives that sound logical and conventional to me at face value but have little grounding or legitimacy in the communities facing challenge,” Dwight says.
Thinking differently especially means redefining our perception of risk. “It used to be that we saw the unconventional as risky; I have come to believe, however, that we face greater risk if we simply continue to assert conclusions, rather than doing the grassroots work to understand and define the right approach,” Dwight says. Real change can only come about if we begin by changing both the how and the who of creating it.
That’s not an easy path, but Dwight’s work with New Profit makes him optimistic. “Despite the immensity of the challenges we collectively face,” he says, “I see this as a moment of opportunity to change the way philanthropy works and lift up these proximate leaders and their innovative solutions. Resources are still critical, but the real impact is unleashing the understanding and ideas of truly proximate leaders. Impact in this arena actually comes from ‘letting go, and letting others.’”