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Crowdfunding For Clean Energy — Raise Green Launches New Marketplace
Founded by Peter Krajsa and Matthew Brown, NEIF currently manages more than $800 million worth of “innovative energy financing programs.”
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Innovating on the Pay for Success Model: How ‘Social Derivatives’ Can Unlock Everyday Giving to Incentivize Greater Impact
Pay-for-success models have generated considerable excitement in the social finance sector. But according to Akhil Pawar and Geet Kalra at Yunus Social Business, the approach presents several challenges, mainly around the question of who will pay, and how to ensure an economical structure. They share a potential solution that leverages retail giving, substituting large donors with small ones by using "social derivatives."
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing, Social Enterprise
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Southeast Asia’s Fintech Startups Face Shakeout From Coronavirus
The coronavirus is unlikely to halt the rapid advance of fintech firms in the emerging landscapes of Southeast Asia. Along the way, however, it is amplifying the gains of some startups while inflicting pain on many others.
- Categories
- Coronavirus, Finance
- Region
- South Asia
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Too Risky for the Crowd? Assessing the Potential of Crowdfunding for Energy Access
Crowdfunding raised $77 million for energy access between 2015 and the end of June 2019 – and the industry is on pace to generate over $200 million in crowdsourced financing by 2020. But despite this growth, Davinia Cogan at Energy 4 Impact points out that crowdfunding remains on the periphery of discussions about energy access finance. With the sector's estimated $33 billion in commercial capital needs, she explores whether – and how – the crowd can be part of the financing mix.
- Tags
- crowdfunding, energy access, SDGs
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Kiva’s Crowdfunding Platform Transforms Into Hub for Impact Investing and Financial Inclusion
“One of the things that goes unnoticed about Kiva is our quiet but continued pursuit of the impact being achieved,” says Premal Shah, who until 2018 was president and the only remaining cofounder still with Kiva. “This is hard to do and hard to measure. But it is critical.”
- Categories
- Finance
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Press release: SolarHome raises US$10 million in debt financing, targets 100,000 off-grid households in Myanmar by the end of 2019
The new funds will enable SolarHome, which has already installed close to 28,000 solar home systems, to accelerate expansion across Myanmar. Through this expansion, the company aims to reach 100,000 homes with its product packages that include budget, basic and premium solar system bundles for lighting and phone charging purposes, as well as TV bundles.
- Categories
- Energy
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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Financing the Energy Access Revolution: Three Technologies That Are Driving Africa’s Momentum
Technology has become central to the energy access story in Africa. It’s an essential part of all the key stages of an enterprise’s work – from raising the initial capital and financing the equipment, to designing and delivering the final product itself. And the new possibilities opened up by technology are increasingly seen as potential game-changers, in a region where some 590 million Africans – around 50 percent of the population – are still without access to electricity. Ben Good, the CEO of Energy 4 Impact, explores three areas in which tech-driven approaches – from crowdfunding to cryptocurrency – are making an impact.
- Categories
- Energy, Social Enterprise, Technology
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How Steve Jobs inspired PARK, a soccer social enterprise that’s on the hunt for $500,000 in equity crowdfunding
As Apple’s former creative director, Davy regularly sat down with Jobs and even worked on developing a “global giving platform” through iTunes. It was a project that never fully eventuated due to Jobs’ health difficulties, but in the following years, Davy kept coming back to the idea of business models that make a solid impact.
- Categories
- Uncategorized