-
Healthy Foods and New Jobs, Part 2: Infrastructure matters
On the way to introducing a food cart vendor business in Benin, West Africa, MamaCarts has encountered all sorts of problems with sanitation, incorporation and the government. But there’s a positive spin on these infrastructure gaps: Alternative solutions do exist and people circumnavigate these difficulties on a daily basis.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Education, Health Care, Social Enterprise
-
Positive (and Negative) Charges – Which Business Models Are Surging: Going Off Grid Series (pt 2)
What’s the best business model for distributed energy solutions? Jack Bird with Santa Clara State University says the answer is entirely dependent on the technology, the target market and the resources of the enterprise. No one model is the silver bullet for providing the 1.3 billion people suffering from energy poverty with clean, reliable and affordable energy. There are, however, a few takeaways from the exhaustive Energy Map.
- Categories
- Education, Energy, Health Care
-
Making Impact Easier: How impact investing can put capital providers and seekers on the road to more investible deals
A growing number of financial institutions are embracing impact investing, but much work remains to be done to build a robust market. Impact Economy’s new report explores how major financial advisors and institutions could align their investments, build viable pipelines of investible deals, and make impact both commercially viable and socially transformative.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
-
Lessons Learned from Over 60 Distributed Energy Enterprises : ‘Going Off Grid’ Series (pt 1)
Today NextBillion is launching a new series: Going Off Grid, which explores new business models, investment strategies and public-private partnerships to bring services to the ‘energy poor.’ In 2011, Santa Clara University launched the Energy Map to share the findings that grew out of the work with over 60 distributed energy enterprises working across the world, including Africa, India, South East Asia and Latin America.
-
Weekly Roundup – 7/4/14: Finding best buys in global health, and not falling in love with ideas
The Medical Credit Fund recently won OPIC’s Access to Finance award, for figuring out ways to give loans to small rural health clinics in Tanzania, Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria. The kicker: The fund has given loans to more than 500 health care providers and its repayment rate is 97.3 percent.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
-
Facilitating New Markets: Philanthropies are uniquely suited to fostering market-based solutions to poverty
Monitor Deloitte’s recently released Beyond the Pioneer report includes a call for organizations to step up as “industry facilitators” to help overcome key challenges to scaling market-based solutions to social problems. Based on its experience in India, the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation describes several ways philanthropies can play that role.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
-
Supporting the Growth of Inclusive Businesses: Three lessons on ‘industry facilitation’
In looking beyond individual organizations trying to grow their business models, the Results for Development Institute saw some common themes about what industry facilitators can do to support the growth of inclusive industries.
- Categories
- Education, Health Care
-
Social Lending for Smallholders: Opportunities to support social lenders in closing the smallholder agricultural finance gap
The global demand for food is increasing, but the smallholder farmers who could help meet that demand lack the funds to invest in productivity and connect to markets. And many of the businesses that aggregate smallholders lack access to credit. Social lenders are one solution, says Laura Goldman, in discussing the Initiative for Smallholder Finance’s new guide to investing in or funding the sector.
- Categories
- Agriculture
