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NexThought Monday – Second Chances in Global Development: How savings and lending groups can achieve what microcredit hasn’t
Jeffrey Ashe’s early research on behalf of USAID helped make microfinance a global development phenomenon. He now believes that savings and lending groups could have an impact that’s just as profound, but with a key difference: while microfinance struggles to reach the very poor, he says, savings and lending groups are expressly designed to meet their needs.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Tags
- savings
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Cash Versus Cows (Part 1): Looking at the benefits of asset versus cash transfer programs
Is it better to give a cow or cash? Are cash and asset transfers hand-outs or a hand up for the extreme poor? BRAC examined the two approaches, and in the first installment of a two-part post, it compares the impact of cash transfers versus physical productive assets like livestock, seed and agricultural inputs, or a bundle of goods for petty sales.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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Curbing the “Impact Impostors”: The growing movement toward transparency in impact investing
Impact investing’s rising popularity has spawned some unfortunate side effects. For instance, as demand for a social component has grown among investors, so have efforts to brand standard equity investments with the impact label – even when their actual impact is negligible. In the final post of his series, Bill Burckart details the efforts of policy makers, regulators and investors to address this issue.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise
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5 Success Factors for Technology Distribution and Adoption in the Last Mile
How can innovative technologies be distributed and adopted at scale in the last mile? This is a key question driving social enterprises and nonprofits aiming to leverage the power of innovative products designed for the poor. Kopernik, a nonprofit headquartered in Indonesia, has consolidated its observations into five key factors – factors that Project Manager Tomohiro Hamakwa hopes will be useful for other enterprises hoping to make market inroads.
- Categories
- Energy, Social Enterprise
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Better Loans for Better Housing: How Housing Microfinance and Strategic Value Chains Can Help Alleviate the Low-Income Housing Deficit
The majority of the world’s population lives in cities, and much of our future population growth is projected to occur in cities in the developing world. But in spite of the demand, the BoP housing market has been largely handicapped by informality and undeveloped channels for financing and technical assistance. Gary Carrier explores a number of market-based solutions.
- Categories
- Finance
- Tags
- housing, lending, microfinance
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Impact and Risk Metrics…in Smallholder Finance and Beyond: Three new metrics collaboration tools from the Initiative for Smallholder Finance
In financing smallholder farmers, there’s a gap of over $400 billion between demand and supply. Impact and risk metrics can play an important role in closing that gap, but current metrics are confusing to industry leaders and daunting to potential new entrants. The Initiative for Smallholder Finance has created three new metrics collaboration tools to help clarify the space.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Impact Assessment
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NexThought Monday (2/10/14) – The Kiva Fairytale: It’s a Microlending Superstar – But Who is it Really Serving?
Beloved by the public and celebrated by the likes of Bill Clinton and Oprah, Kiva is perhaps the most famous microlender in the world. It lets users lend small amounts via the Internet to individual low-income entrepreneurs, based on their personal stories and photos. But according to Hugh Sinclair, it’s focused more on making lenders feel good than on actually helping the poor.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
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NexThought Monday (1/20/14) – The Tragic Failure of Microcredit: Yunus’ Dream Has Become a Nightmare for the Global Poor
Microcredit was devised as a free market solution that would enable the global poor to escape their own poverty by starting an income-generating activity. But Milford Bateman argues that due to deregulation, commercialization - and fundamental flaws in the model - microcredit has instead undermined developing economies and trapped the poor in a cycle of debt.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
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