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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 : How to bridge the ‘Pioneer Gap’ and support entrepreneurs in the earliest stages
Announcements of impact-branded seed funds and investor networks have become so commonplace they no longer seem novel. However, the fact is most are structured to only invest in companies that are already succeeding and ready to scale. The resulting Pioneer Gap – best captured in the Monitor Group and Acumen Fund’s “From Blueprint to Scale” report – has been exposed.
- Categories
- Investing
- Tags
- impact investing
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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
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Put Down the Champagne, Pick Up the Computer Mouse: For Solar Power To Reach Poor Consumers, the Focus Must Be On Results
The 2013 World Economic Forum in Davos launched with the theme "Resilient Dynamism." Although I have never attended Davos, the international gathering of dignitaries did remind me somewhat of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) conference, ‘Sustainable Energy Strategies in Low and Middle-Income Economies,’ in November. Is there a better way to support BoP businesses? The answer is yes.
- Categories
- Energy
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Yearly Roundup: VOTE for the Most Influential Post of 2013
We thought that the most democratic way to run this contest for The Most-Influential NextBillion Post of 2013, was to simply pick the 12 posts (one per month) that attracted the most views in calendar year 2013. The rest is up to you. We hope you will vote early and often for your favorite(s) among the 12 contenders.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
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The Dark Side of Financial Inclusion: Financial services companies in South Africa are monetizing financial illiteracy
The recently released findings of the 2013 FinScope survey highlight a significant increase in adoption of formal financial products in South Africa. On the face of it, this is good news - access to these products can help people live more financially secure and sustainable lives. But a closer look at the data reveals a more disturbing picture.
- Categories
- Education
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Tweeting to Better Financial Products : What USAID learned in its pilot project to harness real-time data to improve entrepreneur loans.
To gain a better understanding of the digital footprint of loan beneficiaries, USAID interviewed a small sample group about their usage of various digital tools, and asked them about the terms they use when talking about accessing loans.
he agency then used those terms and keywords to build filters to monitor social media chatter about financial inclusion, and deployed monitors through Twitter and Google search trends.- Categories
- Technology
