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(With Video) Beyond the Prototype: Wello’s CEO on product design, understanding customers and advice for social entrepreneurs
Cynthia Koenig, CEO of Wello, whose flagship product is a rolling water tank, advises against getting too reliant on a series of check boxes when it comes to measuring impact. In a video interview with NB, she talks about prototyping the next generation of the device, designed for BoP customers.
- Categories
- Education, Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise
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Dasra Philanthropy Week 2014: Urgency in gender equality
Dasra hosted its fifth annual Philanthropy Week from March 5-7. It convened more than 600 prominent philanthropists, corporations and impact investors to catalyze funding to India’s social sector. And as Nilima Achwal explains, Dasra has made a notable strategic shift to focus on adolescent girl empowerment.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise
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African Angel Investors: Creating an ecosystem
Angel investor circles are notably absent in most African capitals. And there are not many formal structures where one can gain this kind of support - especially for social and BoP-focused business ideas. Tara Sabre Collier discusses the challenges and opportunities in developing Africa’s angel investing ecosystem.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise
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Scaling Mobile for Development: Strengthening the business case for social enterprises, including those delivering health care
The developing world is rapidly gaining access to mobile phones, but still lags in services key to development. This gap presents an opportunity for social entrepreneurs, impact investors, NGOs and mobile operators who would like to achieve positive social impact through commercially viable businesses.
- Categories
- Education, Health Care, Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise, Technology
- Tags
- research, scale, social enterprise
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Rethinking Impact and Redefining Success: Highlights from Unite for Sight’s Social Entrepreneurship Institute
Unite For Sight recently hosted its inaugural Social Entrepreneurship Institute, a day-long event dedicated to social entrepreneurship across a variety of sectors, including health care. Speakers focused on several key best practices in social entrepreneurship, from beginning an organization to measuring impact and eventually scaling up.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise
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Building an India-Africa Pipeline – Part One: Intellecap’s Sankalp Africa conference focuses on South-South social innovation transfer
How can an India-Africa innovation transfer be hastened? What are the risks? That will be the top agenda point of Intellecap’s Sankalp Africa conference, an industry gathering of more 350 funders, entrepreneurs, intermediaries and others on Feb 12-13 in Nairobi.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise
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The Best of 2013: Bridging the Gap with Early Capital for BoP Models: An impact evaluation of VisionSpring in El Salvador
It’s natural for impact investors to focus on companies with measurable social impact and financial returns. But they often overlook models with impact potential that are still in their pre-commercial phase. This lack of early stage capital can limit the development of promising businesses, leading to missed opportunities for the poor and for investors. That’s why the IDB’s Opportunities for the Majority initiative offers grants to pre-commercial pilots like VisionSpring’s eye care model in El Salvador.
- Categories
- Health Care, Impact Assessment
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What’s Next for Impact Investing? The Value of a Formal Fund Structure To Maximize Impact
Impact investing has been building momentum both in the United States and abroad, promising to be a new model for sustainable development. Numerous reports in the past two years have pointed out the growth of the industry. Yet despite this promise, the industry faces many challenges. Here’s what some organizations are doing to address these challenges.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing
- Tags
- impact investing