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The Pandemic is Not Over for Social Enterprises: Here’s How Impact Investors and Other Funders Can Help Them Survive COVID-19
Social enterprises are developing innovative, sustainable and scalable solutions to the world's deepest economic and social issues, but many of these businesses are at risk of disappearing due to COVID-19. According to Alethia Kang at Acceso and Luke Seidle at Kiva, impact investors and other funders must step up to keep the social enterprise field afloat. They share five steps funders can take to bolster these businesses, and discuss how the partnership between their two organizations illustrates the value of flexible funding support during a crisis.
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- Agriculture, Coronavirus, Entrepreneurship, Investing
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How to Solve Clean Cooking for 4 Billion People: The Disruptive Potential of the ‘Impact Flywheel’
Roughly 4 billion people lack access to clean cooking technology. This leads to almost four million annual deaths, particularly among women and girls, and costs the global economy approximately $2.4 trillion each year. But though these challenges have persisted despite many high-profile efforts to address them, Ben Jeffreys of ATEC* International argues that clean cooking is uniquely solvable with the right technology and business models. He discusses how the flywheel model could unlock the disruptive potential of clean cooking technologies to create sustainable change.
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- Energy, Entrepreneurship
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The Supply and Demand Dilemma in COVID-19 Vaccine Manufacturing: Could Lessons from the Fashion Industry Provide Ideas for a Solution?
Expanding access to the COVID-19 vaccine is essential to stopping global transmission and halting the emergence of new variants of the virus. But efforts to optimize vaccine manufacturing and distribution have been hampered by multifaceted challenges involving supply and demand. Prashant Yadav at INSEAD, Rebecca Weintraub at Harvard Medical School, and biotech and vaccine industry consultant Tom Johnston explain how solutions to those issues may be found in another sector with volatile product demand and a global manufacturing base: the fashion apparel industry.
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- Health Care
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Clean Cooking is Heading for Failure: Why the Sector Needs a Real Strategy – Not Just a List of Ideas
Almost 4 billion people across 71 countries are impacted by inefficient, dirty cooking fuels. Yet as Phil LaRocco at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs points out, progress toward addressing this long-standing global crisis has stalled. He argues that the "Systems Strategy" proposed by the influential NGO the Clean Cooking Alliance and the global consulting firm Dalberg is not enough to change the sector’s current trajectory. Instead, he urges clean cooking stakeholders to embrace a coherent, ecosystem-wide strategy, outlining three potential alternative approaches.
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- Energy, Environment
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Making This Year Better Than the Last: A Recent Survey Assesses the Pandemic’s Impacts on Micro and Small Businesses
Micro and small businesses dealt with massive challenges during the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic, and even those that adapted and survived still face major struggles. Juan Carlos Thomas at TechnoServe shares the results of a recent study on COVID-19's impact on these enterprises, and explores how his organization has been supporting them – including through a crisis toolkit that helps them weather the pandemic's challenges, and through digital tools focused on business training and access to finance.
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- Coronavirus, Entrepreneurship, Technology
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Scaling the Last-Mile Distribution Industry With Data-Driven Lending
Low-income consumers in emerging markets rely heavily on last-mile distributors (LMDs) for access to life-changing products, from smartphones to solar home systems. But as Erin Junio at Angaza explains, despite the critical role they play in the sale and distribution of these products, LMDs struggle to access the funding they need to scale. She explores the funding challenges these businesses face — and how data-driven innovations in lending are emerging to close this financing gap.
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- Energy, Entrepreneurship, Investing
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Beyond Risk: How Addressing Transaction Costs Can Boost Lending to Agricultural SMEs in Africa
Providing loans to agricultural enterprises in East Africa can be a complicated task, with challenges ranging from higher origination costs to arduous journeys to conduct due diligence. As Brian Milder of Aceli Africa explains, that makes many lenders reluctant to serve these businesses — and this lack of capital is stunting the growth of local agri-SMEs. In this third article in a four-part series, he explores the barriers to financing in the industry – particularly the under-recognized role of high transaction costs in limiting capital flows – and shares how Aceli is addressing them.
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- Agriculture, Investing
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21st Century Investing: Why Today’s Global Challenges Call for a System-Level Approach to Impact
From climate change and embedded social inequities to global pandemics, the scope and scale of the risks facing our world have increased. But according to William Burckart and Steve Lydenberg at The Investment Integration Project, these overlapping crises are serving as wake-up calls to many investors, leading them to take a more holistic approach to today's complex challenges. They describe this growing class of “system-level investors,” and how they're going beyond both conventional and sustainable investing to address global problems on a deep, systemic level.
- Categories
- Investing
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