About us
About us
When Luiza Serpa was invited for an interview in Santos Dumont Airport lobby, in Rio de Janeiro, she did not imagine that her life would be completely transformed. There, she met the former financial market executive and philanthropist Marcos Flávio Azzi, who was looking for someone to lead the opening of the Rio de Janeiro branch of the now-defunct Instituto Azzi in São Paulo. After a successful partnership, the team noted that Rio’s specific needs required more flexibility in order to achieve the Institute’s outlined goals and, thus, with the support of Marcos Flávio, Instituto Phi was founded in March 2014.
As a non-profit organization, Phi advises individuals and companies in donating to social projects, ensuring a well-applied investment and measurable results. Phi’s work is personalized for each donor, seeking to connect their drive for impact with the best social projects working to reduce social inequality in Brazil.
“Instituto Phi manages to masterfully combine the professionalism of a high-performance organization relating to its investors, with a human and compassionate vision when investing in social projects” says Marcos Flávio Azzi.
Over the years, Instituto Phi has become a major hub of social innovation, with vast knowledge in the most varied causes across the country. If a corporation wishes to get involved, a donation can be made either directly or through incentive laws (with Phi’s support).
The projects developed under Instituto Phi’s mentorship are in accordance with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a collection of 17 global metrics established by the General Assembly of the United Nations to improve the well-being of various demographics and environments. To maximize the possibilities of support and the transparency of each project, every partner organization is evaluated based on stability, transparency, impact potential, and management quality.
By 2019, Instituto Phi had extended its impact to all regions of Brazil, as well as abroad, through a partnership with an American multinational company’s philanthropic fund t hat established financial support to Brazilian community-based social organizations.
In 2022 (eight years after its founding), with offices in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, Instituto Phi was recognized by Época magazine as one of the 100 best NGOs in the country and, previously in 2020, won the Folha Social Entrepreneur Award in the Humanitarian Aid category.
Beyond providing financial resources for social transformation, Instituto Phi works to develop the practice of philanthropy, so that citizens become committed to promoting collective well-being. The name Phi was inspired by the Greek word philantropia, which means “love of humanity.” Here, this “love of humanity” is the search for intelligent philanthropy with monitoring and tracking of social impact results.
