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The Imperative of Change – An Interview with Bill Drayton
"All of us are living at an extraordinary time, when the world is making the final move away from being organized around repetition, to being organized around change." That's the view of social enterprise pioneer Bill Drayton, founder and CEO of Ashoka. He describes this vision and its vast implications in this video interview, recorded at the SOCAP15 conference.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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The Challenges of Starting Your First Impact Fund
Starting an impact fund is HARD. New fund managers face a host of major challenges getting a fund off the ground. Dave Richards, managing partner and co-founder at impact fund accelerator Capria, shares three challenges and a few lessons on overcoming them.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
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Solar Solution for Saltwater Stress
MENA is the most water-stressed region in the world. The top sixteen countries in the world facing shortages of renewable water supplies are those between Morocco and Oman, according to 2011 data from risk advisory firm MapleCroft.
- Categories
- Environment
- Region
- North Africa & Near East
- Tags
- social enterprise, solar
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Viewpoint: How Social Entrepreneurs Can Bolster Climate Resilience
As the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris convenes, it’s impossible to underestimate the importance of government policy-level agreements on climate change. The world’s poor communities — whose lives and livelihoods are tied most directly to local natural resources — are already feeling the impact of climate change. They are suffering now from diminished access to energy and clean water, food deprivation, deforestation and other habitat loss, the spread of tropical diseases, and other threats to their health and livelihoods.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment
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How a Change in Perspective Helped Ignite Cookstove Sales
Envirofit is a social enterprise that since 2007 has produced and sold low-cost biomass cookstoves in developing nations. Along the way, it learned that good things happen when firms treat the BoP market as customers to be served, rather than beneficiaries.
- Categories
- Health Care, Social Enterprise
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Two Keys to Advancing Global Financial Inclusion
JP Morgan recently joined with the Gates Foundation, Bankable Frontier Associates, Accion International, Omidyar Network and others to create the Catalyst Fund. Catalyst will provide funding and mentorship to financial inclusion-focused social entrepreneurs in emerging markets that offer breakthrough technology innovations to promote financial health globally. Janis Bowdler discusses the new fund, and two key approaches to bringing financial services to the world's poorest.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
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OPINION: The Impact Investing Illusion
For many who have been working in the social enterprise space for a long time, nothing has been quite so startling as the recent lightning fast acceleration of the so-called "impact" investing movement. In the U.S., much of the traction for the movement has been supplied by the rise of new "hybrid" legal forms such as the Benefit Corporation and the L3C, and the spread of the B Corp brand.
Some view these developments as the long-awaited key to scaling solutions to the world's most intractable problems. I'm not so sure about that. In fact, I'm worried as hell. Let me tell you why.- Categories
- Investing
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NexThought Monday: Want to Work at a Social Enterprise? Stand out with these skills
So what do you need to stand out as a job applicant to social enterprises? In our experience here at Impact Business Leaders, where we’ve helped more than 70 professionals find new roles in social enterprises, there are a few key skill sets that have set our most successful participants apart.
- Categories
- Education, Social Enterprise