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A Corporation’s Role in Building Local Communities – A response to Acumen Fund Lesson #4
Over the past ten years, Acumen Fund has refined its approach for investing in market-based solutions to uplift the poor. In Acumen’s 10 lessons from the past decade, lesson #4 emphasizes the significance of local solutions driven by strong leadership to solve poverty in their communities. Here’s how some corporations have embodied this lesson.
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- Impact Assessment
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Dispelling the Top Five Mobile Money Myths
I like talking about how to build mobile money networks, how people use it, what additional functionality can be built on it, and how it might give people more opportunities to improve their lives. But I often find myself side-tracked into slaying mobile money myths. Here are five concerns that I wish people didn’t lock into quite so quickly.
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- Technology
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Social Innovators Collective, Shared Experiences (Without Consultants)
The Social Innovators Collective was established to address common challenges and share resources among social entrepreneurs. The NYC group is deep seeded in the belief that collective (as the name suggests) insights and efforts are more effective when united than apart. Launched nearly two years ago, the network is charting a new path for growth.
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- Impact Assessment
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Chasing Gazelles to Achieve Poverty Reduction, Development Goals
Economist David Birch coined the term "gazelle" as private businesses with annual revenue growth of 20% over four years. Such SMEs create the vast majority of new jobs and GDP growth in the U.S. and Europe, but how does this translate into opportunities in emerging markets? A recent IFC memo and forum on harnessing gazelles offers answers.
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- Uncategorized
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- impact investing
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NextBillion is Now Available on Google Currents
Some of you, in fact nearly 2,000 of you as of this writing, have discovered that NextBillion was recently included among the first 180 content providers in the new Google Currents application. For everyone else with an Android phone or tablet, or an iPhone or iPad, we hope you join us by downloading the free Google Currents and subscribing to NB.
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- Uncategorized
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Jane Goodall and Affordable Housing
Can we build affordable housing for all in our lifetime? The authors in this series say YES ? but. Old patterns in the housing value chain can’t continue as government action, public policy or business as usual. A new ?housing ecosystem? is needed to catalyze breakthroughs, support cross-sector collaborations and create sustainable solutions.
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- Investing, Uncategorized
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- housing
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Growing Up Fast, What the Dalberg Survey Tells Us About Successful Social Entrepreneurs
Want to find out what made the good enterprises great - and not just in anecdotal form? Dalberg Global Development Advisors clearly thought so. Working with Harvard, the consulting firm polled more than 60 social entreprenurs to find out how they lept the hurdles that every venture faces. Check out the survey and a replay of the live webinar.
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- Education, Social Enterprise
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- impact investing, research, scale
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Does ’the Cloud’ Have a Silver Lining for the Poor? New Sources of E-Transaction Data Hold Promise
Financial services firms in wealthy nations depend heavily on data to design their products and tailor products to consumers. A very basic example is using credit scores. This data-driven approach has been largely impossible for banks that would pursuing BoP customers. But that may be changing as several startup firms are gearing for launch.
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- Technology
