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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
- Tags
- impact investing
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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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Smallholder Farmers and Big Business: 5 Insights from the Field
Modern agricultural practices and new technologies have transformed the productivity and lives of large farmers, but often fail to reach small and very small farmers for a variety of reasons. However, some pioneer companies and organizations across the world have sustainably increased the income and livelihoods of millions of smallholder farmers, by sourcing produce from them or selling products to them. What do these pioneers tell us?
- Categories
- Agriculture, Impact Assessment
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Mobile-izing Savings with Defaults in Afghanistan
The number of people with phones is far higher than the number of people who have easy access to traditional bank branches, especially among the rural poor. Until now, however, no one has tested whether mobile banking can facilitate default savings programs. This is exactly what a team led by Innovations for Poverty Action set out to do in Afghanistan.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Technology
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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
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Actually, It IS Brain Surgery
Located in the small, remote town of Mbale, Uganda in the far eastern part of the country, the CURE Children’s Hospital of Uganda might seem an unlikely place to pioneer a neurosurgery solution. The medical team operates in a resource-scarce environment, yet they've found a way to serve their population and the infants afflicted with serious brain disorders. They're so good at the procedure, it's been widely exported to the United States.
- Categories
- Health Care, Technology
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Traditional Financial Services vs. FinTech – The Future of Money
The reality is that the industry needs more than just new products — it needs a new paradigm. I believe the concept of Banking as a Platform (BaaP) provides that new approach, presenting collaborative solutions and offering new value chains not only for banks and their partners, but also for related services such as payment processors, credit providers and mobile network operators.
- Categories
- Technology
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