Everybody wants the Dominican diaspora’s capital. Who knows what happens next?
By Jonathan Joel Mentor | @jonathanjmentor
Imagine a Dominican living in New York with $100,000 ready to invest in the Dominican Republic. She already owns property, sends money home, understands the country and wants her next investment to participate more directly in its growth.
Where does she go?
There is no shortage of doors. A bank can open an account. A developer can sell her a property. A brokerage firm can discuss investment products. A government agency can explain incentives. An entrepreneur can show her a company.
Everybody can receive a piece of her interest. The harder question is who takes responsibility for carrying that interest all the way to a completed investment.
That may be one of the most important missing pieces in the Dominican Republic’s relationship with its diaspora.
For years, the country has become increasingly sophisticated at attracting diaspora money. We measure remittances, promote real estate, develop financial products for Dominicans abroad, organize investment forums and encourage companies to seek customers and investors in New York, Miami, Boston and Madrid.
But attracting interest and converting it are two different institutional capabilities.
Everybody owns a piece. Nobody owns the journey.
The Question Before the Investment
Miguel Cohn encountered this problem repeatedly while leading the first Trade, Tourism and Investment Section of the Dominican Consulate in New York. Dominicans approached him interested in buying property, opening accounts, establishing businesses or investing in the country.
Their first question was often not about returns, taxes or yields. It was more basic:
Who can I trust?
Today, as founder of ProDiáspora, Cohn describes an ecosystem in which most of the necessary actors already exist. Banks serve one part of the journey. Developers another. Government promotes investment. Capital-market institutions structure instruments. Businesses seek capital. Community organizations mobilize people.
The problem is the space between them.
As Cohn puts it, each institution handles a piece of the process, but nobody assumes responsibility for the complete journey. That is more than an inconvenience. It is an economic bottleneck.
An investor does not experience the Dominican Republic as an organizational chart. She experiences a sequence of decisions: who is credible, what can I invest in, how do I compare the options, can I complete the financial process remotely, who verifies the opportunity, who helps me understand the risk and how do I actually close?
Every unnecessary handoff creates another opportunity for confidence to become caution and caution to become inaction.
The Dominican Republic may therefore have less of a diaspora-capital problem than a diaspora-conversion problem.
The Problem Is Conversion
Earlier this year, I argued that there is no shortage of Dominican capital. It simply does not move with enough intention. The diaspora makes that contradiction visible.
Dominicans abroad already demonstrate extraordinary economic confidence in the country. They send billions of dollars home, acquire property, support businesses, maintain deposits and participate economically long before policymakers give those behaviors sophisticated names.
The harder question is what happens after the familiar transaction.
Can a Dominican abroad move from property into productive enterprises, from deposits into capital markets, from remittances into investment, or from emotional confidence in the country into participation in infrastructure, innovation and exportable businesses?
And can that journey happen without requiring the investor to personally assemble the machinery?
We already know the diaspora is willing to participate. The next frontier is conversion.
Cohn points to the country’s Financing for Development Strategy, developed within the broader Integrated National Financing Framework, as evidence that diaspora financing is already entering the national development conversation.
That agenda recognizes several of the right problems: financial inclusion, the economic role of remittances, specialized financial products, co-investment mechanisms and even the possibility of a pilot diaspora-bond issuance.
But a national strategy does not become productive capital because it exists in a document. A financial product does not become a capital pathway because somebody launches it. A diaspora bond can be intelligently structured and still struggle if the investor cannot move confidently through the institutions surrounding it.
The missing issue is not merely the instrument.
It is the conversion infrastructure around the instrument.
The Diaspora Conversion Test
Before another diaspora investment product, platform, summit or initiative is announced, there is a simpler test worth running.
Take one real Dominican abroad with capital available and ask whether the system can move that investor through three gates.
Trust. Can the investor identify credible institutions, opportunities and counterparties without depending primarily on personal relationships, family referrals or trial and error?
Pathway. Is there a clear route connecting financial access, opportunity selection, verification, compliance and the institutions required to complete the investment?
Transaction. Does the journey end in an actual, measurable productive investment?
Trust → Pathway → Transaction.
If one of those gates fails, we do not yet have a complete diaspora-investment mechanism. We have components.
That is an important distinction because no individual institution can substitute for the system connecting them. A bank may pass the trust test but have no pathway into productive companies. A government institution may identify opportunities but not own the financial transaction. An investment platform may have products but no trusted mechanism for bringing the diaspora investor through the front door. An entrepreneur may need capital without being ready to receive it.
The problem is not necessarily that these institutions are failing individually.
The problem may be that nobody owns the handoffs between them.
Who Owns the Journey?
That is what makes ProDiáspora’s emerging role interesting.
Cohn is not arguing that his organization should replace banks, regulators, companies, universities, capital-market institutions or the State. His wager is that ProDiáspora could become a point of convergence among them, helping organize the conversation, identify barriers, route people toward credible actors and strengthen the journey between diaspora interest and an actual transaction.
Whether ProDiáspora ultimately owns that role, shares it with others or helps catalyze a broader institutional mechanism remains to be seen. But the gap it is trying to occupy is real.
Cohn proposes beginning with something deliberately smaller than another national announcement: a measurable pilot. Identify credible productive opportunities, prepare the companies receiving capital, select an initial group of diaspora investors, follow the transactions from beginning to end and measure what actually happened.
That instinct matters because before building a national highway for diaspora capital, we should probably find out exactly where the first ten cars get stuck.
The lesson is broader than ProDiáspora.
Any institution serious about diaspora capital should be able to answer a deceptively simple question:
What happens after the investor says yes?
Who receives that person? Who determines the investor profile? Who provides credible opportunities? Who validates them? Who owns the financial process? Who manages the handoffs? Who knows when the investor disappears halfway through?
And who is accountable for whether a transaction actually occurred?
If those answers require a committee meeting just to identify them, we have found the problem.
Measure Where the Money Dies
The next generation of diaspora policy should become much more transactional.
Measure how many investors enter the system, how many reach a verified opportunity, how many complete diligence, how many complete the financial process and how much productive capital is ultimately deployed.
And perhaps most importantly:
Measure where transactions die.
That number may be more useful than another estimate of diaspora interest because once we know where conversion stops, the institutional problem becomes visible.
Maybe the failure is trust. Maybe it is remote onboarding. Maybe companies are not investment-ready. Maybe financial products do not match investor demand. Maybe nobody owns the handoffs.
Maybe five institutions each perform their role correctly while the transaction still fails between them.
That is why the unit of analysis should no longer be the individual institution.
It should be the journey.
For years, the Dominican Republic has measured its relationship with the diaspora through remittances, visits, property purchases, conferences, deposits and expressions of affection for the country. Those indicators matter.
But the next stage demands something harder:
transactions.
Not how many Dominicans want to participate. Not how many institutions consider the diaspora strategically important. Not how many forums we organize.
How much productive capital can move from an initial expression of trust to a completed, verifiable investment?
The Dominican Republic already possesses something many countries would spend decades trying to create: millions of people abroad with deep emotional ties, economic participation, professional networks and a demonstrated willingness to place money in the country.
The scarce asset is not affection.
It may not even be capital.
It is conversion infrastructure.
So before asking the diaspora for more money, perhaps we should run a more demanding test.
If a Dominican in New York raises her hand tomorrow with $100,000 and says, “I am ready to invest,” can the country carry her confidently from that sentence to a completed productive transaction?
If the answer is unclear, we have found the work.
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Jonathan Joel Mentor is the CEO of Successment and architect of the Digital Nomad Summit™, scaling startups and challenging institutions to evolve. UN World Summit Award Nominee & ADOEXPO National Excellence in Exportation Award Winner www.jonathanjmentor.co | digitalnomadsummit.co
