Full Name: Carmel Rafaeli
Title: Founding Partner, The Table | Angel & LP Investor
Organisation: The Table
Location: Based in London, UK, operating globally
Website: thetable.capital
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/carmelrafaeli
What are you currently working on that you’re most excited about?
Building The Table, which I co-founded with Julie Blane. An evergreen philanthropic vehicle and investor community advancing funding for women (co)led climate ventures through recoverable grants alongside community co-investment. A new capital model that unlocks bold, early-stage innovation. No equity, no debt.
Right now we’re focused on raising the philanthropic capital to get the grants side of the model off the ground. I’m excited by all of it: building the community, supporting the founders, and proving out a funding model designed to fix a structural market failure: the chronic underfunding of women (co)led climate innovation.
What impact or success are you seeing from your work?
The community is the proof point right now. The grants model is still in fundraising, but The Table already has 470+ active capital allocators – VCs, family offices, syndicates, corporates – sharing co-investment opportunities into women (co)led climate ventures. Over 200 deals shared, 50 closed.
That community is building trust and creating access for founders who wouldn’t otherwise be in those rooms – changing both who gets seen and how much they’re able to raise.
What key insight or lesson have you learned recently?
There is a genuine willingness to collaborate across the capital stack – and a growing understanding that philanthropy doesn’t have to be siloed, project-based, or one-and-done.
There is real room to innovate, cross-pollinate, and redefine what philanthropic capital can do.
How has the Forum for Impact community supported your work?
The collaboration with FFI and the opportunity to lead the community’s gender and climate lens has given us a space to share and co-create – to help get the flywheel going and find collaborators for our innovative model.
What opportunities or partnerships are you currently exploring?
Family offices and philanthropic capital holders who want their capital to be collaborative and genuinely catalytic at early stage. That’s the primary conversation right now.
What are you most excited about for the next 12 months?
Reaching our first fundraising goal of £20M and starting to allocate recoverable grants – proving the model and the power of non-dilutive, unrestricted, recoverable capital.
Getting to the point where we can show: here’s a founder, here’s the grant, here’s what it unlocked – and here’s the capital coming back.