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Helping Farmers Rebuild After Civil War Isn’t Charity; It’s Good Business
As an agribusiness owner in Africa, GADC founder Bruce Robertson has grown weary of the silver bullet solutions proposed for transforming rural economies. In 22 years in Uganda, he has yet to see a quick fix. But private enterprise has enormous potential to improve rural lives when donors and businesses collaborate, he says, explaining GADC's "replicable model with huge potential for expansion."
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- Agriculture, Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise
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Good Intentions Are Not Enough: How Microfinance Can Truly Serve Low-Income Women Entrepreneurs
Smaller businesses require smaller loans, which are generally less practical or profitable for financial institutions. Group lending solves these issues for institutions – but it’s not always ideal for customers, who often prefer an individual loan. With support from MetLife Foundation grantee Women’s World Banking, Egypt’s Lead Foundation set out to design and deliver this type of product – specifically to low-income women entrepreneurs.
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- Uncategorized
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Funding Education With Impact: How We Can Address Student, Market Needs in India
Although education is one of the most funded causes among private social funders in India, including about US $45 million in impact investment per annum over 2014-2017, this has translated into near-universal access to education at primary school level but not in other education segments. Asian Venture Philanthropy Network's Martina Mettgenberg-Lemiere and Anh Nguyen propose some market-based strategies.
- Categories
- Education, Impact Assessment, Investing
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How the World’s First Social Sustainability Bond is Connecting Back Streets to Wall Street
The Women’s Livelihood Bond (WLB) is the world’s first social sustainability bond with a dual focus on social and financial returns to be listed on a stock exchange. This represents "an immense achievement for impact investing," says Rakhi Sahay, head of Knowledge Management at Impact Investment Exchange. The WLB gives the Cambodian woman entrepreneur, the Filipino farmer, and the Vietnamese mother access to capital by providing loans to high-impact enterprises and microfinance institutions.
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- Impact Assessment, Investing
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Adding the Secret Sauce: The Recipe for Turning Young Social Entrepreneurs into Impactful Leaders
Six years ago, Alanna Sousa couldn't even pronounce the word 'entrepreneurship,' but she soon fell in love with social entrepreneurship. Sousa recounts her journey from naively opening a 'consultancy for social impact' in her native Brazil to learning the importance of mentoring and coaching for success in the social business sector. She now works for the Global Good Fund, which trains young entrepreneurs to tackle urgent social problems.
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- Uncategorized
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Sharing SOCAP: Why My Favorite Conference Needs to Leave San Francisco – And Other Takeaways from #SOCAP17
SOCAP and San Francisco: They go together like GIIN and Toniic. Bad impact investing jokes aside, NextBillion editor Scott Anderson makes the case that it's time for the much-loved social business conference to "throw off the moorings of the beautiful Marina District and consider other cities where the promise of impact investing is gaining steam." Check out his argument, along with other takeaways from the event, in this roundup.
- Categories
- Investing
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Deciphering Emerson’s Tears – Is it Time for Impact Investing to Lower its Expectations?
At SOCAP17, impact investing pioneer Jed Emerson gave a tearful speech from the main plenary stage, in which he called on the industry to remember the true purpose of capital, and not to let its efforts to build the market distract from its higher goals. We explore some potential implications of this emotional high point of the conference.
- Categories
- Investing
- Tags
- ESG, impact investing
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The Financial Lives of Struggling Americans: The Financial Diaries and The Unbanking of America
Elisabeth Rhyne of the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion reviews two new books that take a look Americans' increasingly precarious financial lives. Both books examine America's top economic challenge – the crumbling of the economic foundation for many working-class and middle-class families – and they do so through the lens of financial services, an unusual but revealing perspective, Rhyne writes.
- Categories
- Finance
