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Augmented Reality for Financial Literacy: An Innovative Approach to Delivering Immersive Customer Education
India's Business Correspondents – i.e., retail agents engaged by banks to provide financial services at locations other than a bank branch – often struggle to learn about the new products and services their banks offer. And though online training has become the new normal during the pandemic, many of these agents find it difficult to complete. Piyush Singh and Rahul Ranjan Sinha at Grameen Foundation India discuss the value of augmented reality in addressing this challenge – and in enhancing online financial education more broadly for underserved customers.
- Categories
- Education, Finance, Technology
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From Impact Investing to ‘Impact-First’ Investing: Seven Ways Investors Can Take a Holistic Lifecycle Approach to Impact
Impact investing is playing a growing role in addressing many complex societal problems. But as Varad Pande and Twinkle Malhan at Omidyar Network India point out, one of the critiques of the sector is that its approach to impact is not holistic – i.e., many investors' focus on impact stops after a fund's strategy has been set and its deals have been vetted. To address this issue, they propose a more holistic approach to creating impact across the lifecycle of each investment – from sourcing higher-impact deals, to supporting investees' efforts to sustain and increase their impact.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing
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Creating New Pathways in Retail to Support Persons with Disabilities in India
In many countries, the retail, hospitality and services sector is a great source of employment for people with disabilities. Yet in India, which has one of the largest retail sectors globally, current working conditions within this industry are often unwelcoming for disabled people. B.S. Nagesh at Trust for Retailers and Retail Associates of India (TRRAIN), Celia Sanchez-Valladares Barahona at Ashoka Nordics, and Kristina Humphreys explore how TRRAIN is working to create employment opportunities for people with disabilities in India’s retail sector at an industry-wide scale.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
- Tags
- employment, scale, skill development
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Why Social Enterprises Struggle to Measure Impact – And What Impact Investors Can Do About It
Impact investors typically rely on output measurements, such as total capital invested or number of people served, to assess their impact. But it's harder for investors and their investees to sustainably capture outcome data that assesses actual improvements in customers' lives. Spencer MacColl at Kiva shares data from Kiva's annual impact measurement survey, which reflects the current measurement practices and challenges of the microfinance institutions and other social enterprises Kiva supports. He explores the lessons these findings offer to impact investors and others who are working to design more effective measurement practices.
- Categories
- Finance, Impact Assessment, Investing, Social Enterprise
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Accomplishing the Impossible: Lessons on Scaling From BRAC Founder Sir Fazle Hasan Abed
Countless books and articles have addressed the challenges of going to scale in the development sector — yet a systematic approach to scaling remains out of reach. However, as Scott MacMillan at BRAC USA explains, BRAC founder Sir Fazle Hasan Abed was arguably more successful than anyone at scaling effective poverty programs. He shares insights from his new book on Abed's life and work, which sheds light on how BRAC has created and scaled programs to an extent that no other nonprofit or social enterprise has managed to achieve.
- Categories
- Education, Finance, Health Care, Social Enterprise
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To Tax or Not to Tax Mobile Money: The Impact on Digital Financial Services in Africa and Beyond
Mobile money is widely seen as a promising engine for global development. But governments in Africa are also increasingly viewing it as a lucrative source of tax revenue. With critics raising concerns about the impact of taxing mobile money and other digital financial services, Adrienne Lees and Phil Mader at the Institute of Development Studies explore whether existing research can inform any confident predictions about the effects of these taxes on providers, customers and the broader financial inclusion sector.
- Categories
- Finance, Telecommunications
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The Power of Litigation Funding: How Social Enterprises and Other Small Businesses Can Use it to Defend Their Legal Rights – And Access Capital
Social enterprises and other small businesses are often at a disadvantage when disputes arise with larger companies – particularly in the international context, where the option of going to local courts is not always available. Patrick Miller at P Miller Legal Services explores how commercial litigation funding can address this issue, by enabling these enterprises to access skilled international counsel funded by external investors who receive a proportion of any eventual award. He discusses the benefits this approach can offer to both small businesses and investors.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
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The Power of Results-Based Funding for Poverty Alleviation: What We Learned from Africa’s First-Ever Development Impact Bond – and What’s Next
Development impact bonds (DIBs) are an innovative, results-based funding model with the potential to reduce poverty and make aid more effective. To assess their impact, a randomized controlled trial was conducted on Africa's first-ever DIB for poverty alleviation, which supported a poverty graduation program implemented by Village Enterprise. Dianne Calvi at Village Enterprise and Brian Boland at the Delta Fund (one of the nine philanthropic investors in the DIB) discuss the results of this study, what they mean for the sector, and how results-based funding can evolve to maximize its impact.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing
