Edmund Hillary Fellowship & the Global Impact Visa

The Edmund Hillary Fellowship (EHF), launched in Auckland in 2016 alongside the Global Impact Visa (GIV) — described by its founders as the world's first immigration policy built around 'impact' rather than net worth or a job offer — ran as a four-year pilot with Immigration New Zealand committing 400 visas to selected Fellows.

By the pilot's later cohorts (~2021-2022), EHF reported 532 Fellows from 58 countries (~400 international, 132 from New Zealand). Over the pilot's four years, Fellows invested $94 million into New Zealand start-ups, funds and businesses and helped New Zealand businesses raise a further $572.2 million; at least 42 new ventures were established by Fellows, several incubated with the University of Auckland's Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

These investment and fundraising figures are self-reported by EHF and its CEO rather than independently audited, and no third-party economic evaluation of the pilot was found. The Global Impact Visa was explicitly a small, curated four-year pilot capped at 400 visas — a deliberately low-volume, high-selectivity model rather than one designed for broad scale-up — and it is unclear whether Immigration New Zealand has committed to a successor visa category since the pilot's scheduled conclusion around 2020-2021.