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Live from SOCAP17: NextBillion’s Schedule of Facebook Live Interviews with Top Names in Impact Investing
SOCAP is finally here, and as part of our coverage, we'll be interviewing a number of prominent leaders in the impact investing and social business world and broadcasting these interviews via Facebook Live (accessible on NextBillion's Facebook page). This lineup is still evolving, as people's schedules develop – so we may be adding or changing some of these interviews in the coming days. But here's the latest schedule.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
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As Impact Investors, Here’s Why We Need to Elevate Human Capital
In a race to bring product to market, forethought and structure around human capital falls lower on the list. Under-investment in talent is crippling in the markets in which impact-focused funds like Blue Haven Initiative invest. The fund's Lauren Cochran and Grace Horwitz argue it's time for investors to take a more hands-on role.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing
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We Went Looking for Impact Investors – Here’s Who and What We Found
The "friction" of getting an impactful investment fully raised and closed is holding back the flow of capital that wants to be deployed, writes Michael "Luni" Libes. In early 2017, he helped launch investorflow.org, a free service that recently released a report on its first 205 members. Libes explains how the service is attempting to turn anecdotes into analysis.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing, Social Enterprise
- Tags
- data, impact investing, research
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Why Gyms Love January: Leveraging Behavioral Economics for Financial Health
People are famously irrational when it comes to financial matters. We can't seem to resist wasting money on things that we know aren't beneficial. Why do we make self-defeating financial decisions, and how can we be persuaded to change them? Evelyn Stark, financial inclusion lead at MetLife Foundation, discusses the ways financial service providers are leveraging behavioral science to help their clients spend less and save more, in the latest NextBillion podcast.
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- Finance
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‘Cross-sell Done Well’: How One Finance App Found a Balance Between Digital and Human Touch
Field officers at the Sajida Foundation, a microfinance provider in Bangladesh, knew their clients had rich financial lives, and that some held sizable savings balances to enable their goals. They also knew these clients could earn more by converting their savings to a term deposit account. Yet it was difficult for them to offer complex financial advice, or to answer questions around tiered interest rates and differentiated products. The Foundation worked with BFA to develop an Android-based app to address these issues – Ashirul Amin discusses the lessons learned.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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Are Financial Returns Starting to Compete with Social Goals? An Impact Investor Assesses its Involvement in Off-Grid Solar
In the second of two posts, Oikocredit's Laura de Bresser assesses the social and environmental value of its off-grid solar investments: Is achieving financial returns starting to compete with social impact? Here's what the investment firm discovered about whether it's really helping people and the planet – and whether it should continue investing in this market.
- Categories
- Energy, Impact Assessment, Investing, Social Enterprise
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LAST CHANCE to Get a Free Chapter of Ross Baird’s New Book, ‘The Innovation Blind Spot’ – Oct. 31 Deadline
Village Capital president Ross Baird's first book, "The Innovation Blind Spot: Why We Back the Wrong Ideas―and What to Do About It" highlights a startling reality: While a handful of big companies are experiencing unprecedented success, entrepreneurial activity is near a 30-year low in the U.S. Meanwhile, investors are chasing the newest hit app, and ignoring grave and worsening challenges affecting billions of low-income people. We're giving away a free chapter from the book to subscribers of NextBillion Notes, our weekly e-newsletter, during the month of October.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
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Impact Investing and the Profitability Challenge in Off-Grid Solar: Oikocredit Joins the Debate
The debate around impact investing in off-grid solar has sparked surprising passion, and now Oikocredit joins the discussion with a two-post series. In this first post, Laura de Bresser tackles the question of how (and whether) off-grid solar companies can become operationally profitable and less dependent on equity and debt.
- Categories
- Energy, Investing, Social Enterprise
