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Making Impact Easier: How impact investing can put capital providers and seekers on the road to more investible deals
A growing number of financial institutions are embracing impact investing, but much work remains to be done to build a robust market. Impact Economy’s new report explores how major financial advisors and institutions could align their investments, build viable pipelines of investible deals, and make impact both commercially viable and socially transformative.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
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Facilitating New Markets: Philanthropies are uniquely suited to fostering market-based solutions to poverty
Monitor Deloitte’s recently released Beyond the Pioneer report includes a call for organizations to step up as “industry facilitators” to help overcome key challenges to scaling market-based solutions to social problems. Based on its experience in India, the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation describes several ways philanthropies can play that role.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
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Healthy Foods and New Jobs, Part 1: MamaCarts learns valuable lessons while launching food cart delivery service from scratch
MamaCarts began by pitching an idea at a business plan competition and culminated with receiving a 2013 Rockefeller Foundation Centennial Innovation Challenge Award. That’s all there is to starting a food cart delivery service in Benin, West Africa, right? Wrong.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Education, Health Care, Social Enterprise
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Marketing Nutrition for the Bop: New Report by Hystra Focuses on Successes and Failures of Market-Based Approaches
A new study by Hystra is designed to find more large-scale initiatives that leverage market-based mechanisms to bring the benefits of innovative products and services to more families at the BoP, and help solve the scourge of malnutrition.
- Categories
- Education, Health Care
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Weekly Roundup – 6/28/14: “A New Day” for Impact Investing?
On June 25, the Obama White House hosted a roundtable on impact investing, at which over 20 corporations, banks, foundations, and individuals committed to invest more than $1.5 billion in new capital into companies and funds focused on social impact. Some hailed it as a turning point for the sector - but will it be enough? We discuss these developments in this week’s Roundup.
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- Investing
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Trouble Brewing in Microfinance?: Peru and Mexico’s microcredit sectors appear to be in danger of collapsing – and the market-driven model is to blame
In spite of its well-publicized struggles, the market-driven microcredit model remains a revered concept, linked to the belief that free markets and business solutions are the best solutions to poverty. But according to Milford Bateman, flaws in the market-driven model itself are responsible for grave challenges facing Peru and Mexico’s celebrated microcredit sectors.
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- Impact Assessment
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Something New in BoP Housing: A new OMJ study explores four key business models tailored to low-income consumers
In a study just published by the Opportunities for the Majority (OMJ) at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), researcher Christy Stickney highlights several promising approaches to penetrating the BoP housing markets in Latin America and the Caribbean, based on 11 cases from Colombia, México, Nicaragua, Paraguay, and Peru.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
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The Impact of Inclusion: CGAP report looks at recent evidence of how financial inclusion can help the poor
There’s a strong consensus that access to suitable financial services can help poor households improve their lives, while spurring economic activity. But what is the evidence for these positive impacts? CGAP tackled that topic in a recent Focus Note, and we spoke with Nina Holle, an associate microfinance analyst at CGAP, and a co-author of the report.
- Categories
- Education, Impact Assessment
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