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Accelerating Social Unicorns: How an Impact Accelerator is Supporting the Innovators Who are Tackling the World’s Biggest Problems
The holy grail in venture capital is to invest in a “unicorn” — a startup that achieves a valuation of over $1 billion. But as Leslie Labruto at 100x Impact Accelerator explains, this approach overlooks the businesses and organizations that are tackling pressing societal issues at scale. She argues that it’s time to shift the focus to "social unicorns" that aim to make a massive positive social impact, and explores three keys to these enterprises' success.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
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Scale vs. Systems Change: Three Ways Impact-Led Organisations Can Achieve Both
The social impact sector is increasingly recognizing that scaling a solution does not always result in lasting change. According to Emma Colenbrander at Spring Impact, Nell Lemaistre at 100x Impact Accelerator, and Kasthuri Soni and Sharmi Surianarain at Harambee, this realization may seem to force businesses and organizations to choose between scaling their own work and attempting to change the broader system. But they explore how these two goals can actually be pursued simultaneously — if organizations leverage the right kind of funding, mindsets and support.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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Accelerating Systems Change: An Innovative Accelerator Shows How Funders Can Amplify Social Enterprises’ Impact by Transforming Their Funding Model
There’s a growing belief that lasting solutions to today's complex challenges will require fundamental changes to the systems that underlie these issues. According to Celia Sanchez-Valladares Barahona, Stella Printezi and Lucía Tornero at Ashoka, social entrepreneurs are well-placed to accelerate systems change, but the funding models they rely on may end up prolonging the issues they're trying to solve. They explain how funders can transform these increasingly outdated models to better support long-term, systemic change, as illustrated by an accelerator co-created by Ashoka and IKEA Social Entrepreneurship.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
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A DIY Approach to M&E: Four Tips to Overcome the Complexities of Monitoring and Evaluation
Most social enterprises and non-profits recognize that high-quality data and evidence can help them improve performance, attract more funding, and understand — and eventually increase — their impact. Yet as Mia Jeong and Linh Vo at IDinsight point out, these organizations often face financial constraints in creating and sustaining effective monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems. They share some simple but effective ways to create these systems on a limited budget, by taking a do-it-yourself (DIY) approach to monitoring and evaluation.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise
- Tags
- data, impact measurement, nonprofits
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Outgrowing the Flower Pot: Why Just Selling Productive Equipment to Smallholder Farmers is Not Enough
A new wave of companies are bringing equipment powered by renewable, decentralized energy to smallholders, and these devices can significantly boost farmers' yields and product quality. But as Daniel Waldron, Christopher Emmott, Priyanka Dudeja, Paraag Sabhlok and Chris Wayne at Acumen explain, just like a tree growing in a flower pot, this new growth can become a burden if it has nowhere to go. They argue that productive equipment must be combined with market access interventions to truly benefit smallholders, and highlight two innovative companies that are demonstrating the impact of this approach.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Energy, Investing, Social Enterprise, Technology
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Taking Inspiration from Innovation: Key Insights from Eight Entrepreneurs Making an Impact in Emerging Markets
Whether they're working to increase smallholder farmers’ profits, promote water or sanitation solutions, or address other key needs in emerging markets, social entrepreneurs tend to face common challenges. That's why they must learn from each other if they hope to flourish. Brigit Helms at Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship shares insights from eight entrepreneurs in Miller Center’s Clean Water and Climate-Smart Agriculture program, who discuss their innovations, the challenges they’ve overcome and the lessons they’ve learned.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Social Enterprise, WASH
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Lessons in Resilience: What an Impact Investor Learned from an Entrepreneur Who Refused to Give Up
Entrepreneurship is a long game, and winning often comes down to grit. One case in point: Arindam Dasgupta, the co-founder and CEO of Tamul Plates, who has built a thriving business in India despite the historic challenges of recent years. Sachi Shenoy at Calidris and Steve Schwartz at the World Economic Forum were early investors in Tamul Plates through Upaya Social Ventures, the impact investing firm they co-founded. They discuss what Dasgupta has taught them about the qualities and practices investors should look for when seeking resilient entrepreneurs.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
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Just Useful… Or Truly Catalytic? How Entrepreneurs Really View Catalytic Capital — And What Impact Investors Can Do About It
Much of the attention in the impact finance sector tends to go to the stewards of capital — investors, foundations and other funders — most of whom firmly believe that catalytic capital is the type of finance that entrepreneurs value most. But as Bjoern Struewer at Roots of Impact and Jed Emerson at Tiedemann point out, it's unclear if investors' assumptions about the value of catalytic capital align with entrepreneurs’ actual opinions about it. They discuss new research that explores what entrepreneurs really value in this type of financing — and how these structures might be improved.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
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