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Innovation to Impact: At Skoll, exploring why so many global health interventions have failed to expand beyond the pilot level
Participants in a discussion at the Skoll World Forum agreed that when it comes to strengthening health systems, alternative financing models which support long-term, systems-level approaches, could have large payoffs.
- Categories
- Health Care, Impact Assessment
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‘By making it available to people, you are almost by definition doing good’: Grameen Foundation CEO Alex Counts, on microfinance’s past and future
Microfinance has careened from hero to villain status over the years, before settling into its current persona as a useful but not transformative anti-poverty tool. Alex Counts has had a front-row seat in the sector’s turbulent development, as founder and long-time president/CEO of Grameen Foundation. He shares his frank perspectives on microfinance’s past and future in this video Q&A.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
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GM Giants VS Seed Saviors: Food security, contested commercial interests and a host of hot button issues are germinating
Genetically modified seeds have been hailed as the key to ending global hunger, reducing pesticide use and transforming underproductive agriculture. But in the developing world, where those benefits are critically needed, smallholder farmers are also losing their livelihoods to huge industrial farms that outcompete them in the global marketplace. Who wins?
- Categories
- Agriculture
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The Value of ‘Waste’: Waste Capital Partners Sees Value in Impact Bonds, Franchising
Parag Gupta, CEO of Waste Capital Partners, has a vivid example of how much solid waste is produced each week across urban India: twice the weight of the Empire State Building. Only about half of that garbage is actually collected by municipalities for processing. The for-profit and nonprofit organization hopes to expand with impact bonds and franchises to help both farmers and trash pickers.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Education, Social Enterprise
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Avoiding Death by a Thousand Cuts: How a Young Social Enterprise Weathered a Series of Microfailures
David Santillán Giles thought everything was on track with his young social enterprise. But he soon found himself dealing with a string of unforced errors that would put his company in jeopardy. He discusses these mistakes and what he learned from them in the latest post in our series on failure in social enterprise.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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Making it Easier to Go Digital: Lowering barriers to entry for pro-poor financial institutions in Uganda
In December 2014 Airtel Uganda launched a mobile banking service to allow bank customers to access their accounts through mobile money agents. These services allow pro-poor financial institutions to reach rural Ugandans, but forging these digital connections is complex. In the third post in their series on what it takes for microfinance institutions to go digital, Grameen Foundation explores ways to overcome this complexity.
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- Uncategorized
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3 Key Risks in Going Digital – and How Microfinance Institutions Can Address Them: Grameen Foundation provides risk management tips for MFIs adopting mobile solutions
The speed and convenience that make digital services attractive to clients can bring a host of new risks for financial institutions that serve the poor. In the second post in their series on what it takes for microfinance institutions to go digital, Grameen Foundation explores some of these risks, and what MFIs can do to address them.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
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MFTransparency is Dead … What Does That Mean for Pricing Transparency?: The CEO of the influential watchdog initiative discusses the future of pricing transparency in microfinance
MicroFinance Transparency recently announced that it has stopped collecting pricing data for the global microfinance industry. But as CEO Chuck Waterfield explains, that doesn’t mean the movement for transparent pricing is dead. He explains the decision and discusses how the industry can still make fair pricing a reality.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
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