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What Motivates an Impact Angel?: Clearly Social Angels, the UK’s first impact-focused angel investing group, discusses what these investors are looking for
Why does someone become an impact angel investor – and is this a source of capital your company might tap? Though impact angel investing is still relatively new, the experience of pioneer investors can provide a better idea of what they’re looking for. Clare Jones of ClearlySo discusses lessons learned through Clearly Social Angels, the UK’s first impact-focused angel investing group.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
- Tags
- impact investing
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Leading From the Front: How we helped develop the Truelift Assessment Tool, and why MFIs should use it
There will always be skepticism about the microfinance industry’s initiatives to promote transparency. Nevertheless, Freedom from Hunger CEO Steve Hollingworth says that organizations like his are working to refocus the sector on poor clients’ needs. He describes how Truelift, a global initiative to promote accountability and learning in pro-poor development, advances that goal.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
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NexThought Monday – Financial Inclusion and the Internet of Things: How Smart Machines Can Benefit the Poor
The Internet of Things refers to the use of technology to automate data transfer between objects via the Internet. It’s billed as a disruptive technology of the next decade, with applications that range from home automation to wearable fitness devices. But it also has great potential to benefit the poor, by enabling payment mechanisms that let the underbanked access basic products and services.
- Categories
- Energy, Technology, Telecommunications
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Chocolate at Risk?: Why sustainable finance is crucial to ensuring a steady cocoa supply for the world’s chocolate industry
Smallholder cocoa farmers in Côte d’Ivoire produce 40 percent of the world cocoa supply. Yet the vast majority still live in poverty due to declining productivity, and in the absence of long-term financing opportunities, many have been changing to other crops. Rainforest Alliance’s Helen Roy describes how socially-minded investors are mobilizing capital to help these farmers revive their land.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Environment
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The Best-Kept Secret in Impact Investing: A little-known legal tool lets businesses tap mainstream investor capital – so why don’t more social enterprises use it?
A common complaint in impact investing is the lack of options for non-wealthy investors. Many feel that this hamstrings both mainstream investors and the social enterprises that could use their capital. But as Jenny Kassan, CEO of Cutting Edge Capital, describes it in part 4 of our Impact Investing Insights series, a solution to this problem already exists.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
- Tags
- impact investing
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Seven Strategies to Attract 40+ Million New Customers: How U.S. banks can serve immigrants today and tomorrow
The surge of unaccompanied minors crossing the U.S. border has put the immigration debate back in the headlines. But CFSI’s Thea Garon argues that the more important issue is whether the millions of immigrants who already live in the U.S. have what they need to succeed. She lays out new research from CFSI on how financial service providers can serve immigrants - both now and if comprehensive immigration reform is passed.
- Categories
- Investing
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Our Communities are Ours to Own: How Calvert Foundation is empowering small U.S. investors to strengthen their local cities through impact investments
Impact investing allows us to reframe the concept of “the investor” in an inclusive way that challenges all of us to invest in the future we hope to achieve, says Calvert Foundation’s Patrick Davis. Calvert’s "Ours To Own" movement embodies that goal, allowing people to invest as little as $20 to strengthen the communities they live in and love.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing
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Nigeria’s Booming, But Can Health Care Keep Up?: Innovators across the country are designing new methods to reach more people
Nigeria now has the largest economy in Africa, but poverty levels there have remained stubbornly high and extending health care to the country’s large and diverse population is an enormous challenge. Still, innovators are designing new methods to reach more Nigerians with quality, affordable care.
- Categories
- Health Care, Impact Assessment
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