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The Secret to Social Business Scale? An Overlooked Need in Moving Past the Startup Phase
How can social entrepreneurs move from the startup phase into the growth phase? Whatever the focus of their business, entrepreneurs have to build capacity to benefit and employ more people as they scale – and this requires a unique set of skills. Carola Schwank at Siemens Stiftung Foundation discusses the crucial but often overlooked need of organizational development in social business, and describes how the foundation is helping entrepreneurs address it.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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Bridging the Gender Gap in Agriculture: Eight Success Stories for International Women’s Day
Women account for more than 40 percent of the agricultural workforce worldwide, but they own less than 20 percent of the world’s land, and earn just a fraction of what their male counterparts do. On International Women’s Day, Oumou Camara, writing on behalf of Farming First, shares the stories of eight remarkable women who are bridging the gender gap in agriculture in emerging markets around the world.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise
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Four Steps to Avoid Dead-End Impact Investing Leads
Dead-end leads are frustrating for both entrepreneurs and investors. They involve wasted time and resources, disappointment, and the erosion of relationships – and sometimes the exchange of capital that's a poor fit for the entrepreneur’s business. To prevent these issues, the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) has created an online toolkit to help impact entrepreneurs identify their top investor targets. Kimberly Langsam and Cathy Clark at CASE summarize the simple four-step process – and CASE will host a free online demo with more information on March 13 and 19.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing
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Breaking the Catch-22 of Poverty: What’s Next for the Graduation Model?
People in extreme poverty are trapped in a catch-22: They're poor because they can't build a livelihood, and they can't build a livelihood because they're overwhelmed by the crises of poverty. The graduation approach can break this cycle – but though research has demonstrated its effectiveness, it's difficult to scale. Evelyn Stark of MetLife Foundation and Jaya Sarkar of Trickle Up discuss Trickle Up's efforts to adapt the model to achieve mass scale and sustainability.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
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Why Do Low-income Women Entrepreneurs Fail? New Research Provides Some Answers
Everybody loves a business success story, so research on entrepreneurship tends to focus on the Facebooks and Ubers of the world. But in reality, new ventures are more likely to fail than to succeed, and there's a dearth of research on the reasons why – particularly when the entrepreneurs are women in emerging markets. The Failure Institute joined with Pro Mujer to study the failures of hundreds of small businesses run by low-income women in Mexico. Leticia Gasca of the Failure Institute explores the four main causes of failure these women faced.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
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‘Eye-opening’ Impact Assessment: How Benchmarks Can Boost Social and Business Outcomes
For the last ten years, Acumen has been investing in off-grid energy companies in the developing world. In its new Energy Impact Report, the impact investing nonprofit talked directly to thousands of customers about their experiences - good and bad - with these companies’ energy products. Acumen's Kat Harrison discusses the survey's revealing results.
- Categories
- Energy, Impact Assessment, Investing
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Finance Responds to Climate Change: How ‘Recovery Lending’ Can Help Victims of Weather-Related Disasters
Natural disasters leave U.S. communities reeling – but those impacted generally have an insurance safety net. When climate-related catastrophes strike poorer populations, it is almost impossible to recover fully. In fact, every year natural disasters force 26 million people further into poverty. Stewart McCulloch of VisionFund International details a novel disaster insurance program that leverages big data climate models to support nearly 700,000 families with "recovery lending."
- Categories
- Environment, Impact Assessment
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Why Impact Investing is the Next Big Move for Grameen America
David Gough of Grameen America says philanthropy will always be at the heart of the organization's funding, but the nonprofit saw impact investing as an untapped opportunity to fight gender inequity. In celebrating its 10-year anniversary of supporting female entrepreneurship and financial inclusion in the U.S., the group established its first Social Business Fund. The impact investing vehicle is allowing Grameen America supporters to directly invest in the success of more than 100,000 entrepreneurs and receive a financial return in exchange, writes Gough.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing, Social Enterprise
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