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Guest Post: Is it Immoral to Earn Attractive Profits from Poor Customers?
Should we crafting a be a business system that enhances the livelihoods of poor people without making a profit for outside investors? Or should it make a profit for investors as well as the poor people who are served by it? To me the answer is obvious.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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What the 1 Percent (of Capital Markets) Could Do for Impact Investing
How can we unlock new sources of capital from retail investment to ensure impact investment opportunities aren?t just for the wealthy? A new book discusses ?widening the doorway? to create a greater pool of private capital for impact. Meanwhile investment group TriLinc is launching a $1.25 billion fund for ?mainstreet? investors.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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Housing Series: The Case for Housing Support Services
Access to finance and secure tenure has been shown to be the most effective catalysts for self-help incremental housing improvements. But while they are essential, even together, they are not sufficient to improve the living conditions for many of the world’s low-income populations.
- Categories
- Finance
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SELCO: A Business, Ongoing Case Study in Solar-Powered Social Impact
SELCO, a social enterprise traditionally focused on providing solar energy to the rural underserved, has launched a new urban model in India that has helped electrify a set of slum-dwelling households in Bangalore. The early success has been less about the feat of solar power in slums, and more about creating a ripple effect for social impact.
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- Energy, Impact Assessment
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Wedding Bells? A Matchmaking Business Model for Franchise Networks, National Insurance Plans
Franchising private clinics is an exciting approach for improving the quality and affordability of private health services delivered to the poor. A marriage of national health insurance and franchise networks would offer a new vision for health systems in developing countries, in a sustainable model that could dramatically expand access.
- Categories
- Health Care
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Citizen Media: A Global Innovation Competition Produces a New Class of Media Solutions for Empowered
In the past year, there has been a surge in the number of everyday citizens harnessing innovations in media to amplify their voices and create change around the world. When Ashoka Changemakers launched the Citizen Media competition with support from Google, more than 400 entries poured in from around the globe. There’s still time to vote!
- Categories
- Technology
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Weekly Round-up 11-20-11: HealthPoint’s Push to Meet, Exceed Expectations
In a little more than two years, HealthPoint has created a network of medical clinics and clean water access points, providing 22,000 medical consultations, filling 28,000 prescriptions, and assisting more than 50,000 people a day with drinking water. This growth propelled the initial clinics to positive cash flow in the first quarter of 2011.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Health Care
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Three Decades in the Making, How the Aravind Model Came into Focus
At the core of Aravind?s success is a strong culture of service, an attitude of daily work, not as a mechanical endeavor, but as work in service of self and community. This central ethic permeates the Aravind workforce and drives its mission. But how does a culture of service, where many patients are treated for free, add up to good business?
- Categories
- Health Care
