-
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
-
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
-
Re-evaluating Impact Evaluation: Why solely focusing on financials is flawed and other key points from a recent workshop
Organizations struggle to develop robust impact evaluations. If poorly designed and executed, an evaluation can result in misleading conclusions and waste precious resources. A recent workshop hosted by the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs focused on outcomes data collection and analysis. Anyone concerned with social impact measurement, will want to check out these key points.
- Categories
- Education, Impact Assessment, Investing
-
Measuring Impact – Do Non-Profits Do It Better?: Reflections on Dasra’s Philanthropy Week
The number of millionaires in India is growing, and their interest in philanthropy along with the growth of corporate foundations in India means that the social sector will receive an infusion of capital. Born from an era of private sector growth these new funders will likely bring high expectations for scale and impact to the table when assessing social initiatives. Dasra’s Philanthropy Week, is a unique forum in India to compare a number of social enterprises to the standards of these high impact philanthropists.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise
-
Where are the poor? : Lessons to share from BRAC’s poverty ‘graduation program’
In the countries that have some incarnation of the “graduation program” targeting the ultra-poor that BRAC began first experimenting with in the 1990s, communities themselves are also grappling with the question: Where are the poor? It’s a question that large scale aid agencies, impact investors, social enterprises, multinational companies and others ask on a regular basis. So, we thought those stakeholders and others would benefit from learning a bit more about our process.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise
-
Lessons in Growth From Vindhya’s En-ABLED Staff : 90% of the BPO company’s workers are physically disabled
In March 2011, Accion’s Frontier Investments Group and Michael & Susan Dell Foundation invested in Vindhya, which services a customer base of mainly IT and microfinance companies with data management and processing solutions from its state-of-the-art center in Bangalore. Vindhya’s first client was Wipro, one of India’s largest companies, and it’s still a mainstay. What makes Vindhya different, is its differently abled work force.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise
-
The PeaceTXT Proposition: Stopping violence with an SMS
PeaceTXT: a global mash-up of social innovators, software designers and information technologists (to name a few) collaborating on mobile technology’s potential to prevent violence. The collaboration, spearheaded by PopTech, is aiming to create the first broadly available tested methodologies and technical platforms for using mobile phones to disrupt violence and engender more peaceful communities.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Technology, Telecommunications
-
Impact Bonds: Boon or Boondoggle? Before We Hop on the Bandwagon, Let’s Scan the Road Ahead
Although there are many benefits to impact bonds – make no mistake – they are complicated to implement. Because they are new tools and because it is in the interests of all parties involved to reduce risk, only strong programs with proven statistical success are likely to be supported by a social or development impact bond.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
Subscribe to Our Weekly Newsletter, "NextBillion Notes"
Published each Wednesday, our e-newsletter features NextBillion's latest original articles, along with a selection of news, jobs, bizdev opportunities and events from our recent coverage — and regular conference ticket giveaways.
We respect your privacy. Your information is safe and will never be shared.
Don't miss out. Subscribe today.