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Continuing the Quest for Exits: the Role of Mission Markets
IPOs and major exits are still a rare delicacy in the impact investing sector. But Mike Van Patten is trying to change that. He’s founder and chairman of Mission Markets, a specialized financial services firm that provides investment banking and advisory, while operating an online private exchange for the social and environmental capital markets.
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- impact investing
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The Pyramid Within the Pyramid: Segmenting the BoP Affordable Housing Market
A new arrival to a slum and a rickshaw driver living in a slum both are defined as BoP. But the differences between them are as vast as night and day. How can they all be treated the same when it comes to delivering products and services? Since Ashoka launched the Housing for All initiative in 2008, it’s clear the BoP market is far more complex.
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Weekly Roundup: 10-16-11: Creating the Ecosystem, the Unreasonable Way
Like many relatively nascent movements, we use the term "ecosystem" quite a bit when referencing the social enterprise space. For many entrepreneurs (or the frogs in this somewhat stretched analogy) the Unreasonable Institute is that swamp, if you will. The third annual six-week acceleration program is accepting applications for 25 coveted slots.
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W/Video Via ViewChange, Oxfam: This World Food Day, Making it Africa’s Last Famine
In 2009, 200 households in the northern Ethiopian farming village Adi Ha enrolled in an Oxfam America program letting them trade work for insurance against draught. This year over 13,000 families in 45 villages enrolled. As draught threatens East Africa, this 1/2 hour documentary from ViewChange and Oxfam shows how investments can break the cycle.
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- Health Care
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- nutrition
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Finding Value in Waste
As the number one exporter of Brazil nuts, Bolivia cultivates approximately 20,000 tons a year. Only 0.8 percent of the Brazil nuts are exported with their shell; the rest are cracked and their nutshells are discarded as waste. But the founders of PelletBol, developed a method to compress the Brazil nutshells into pellets as a source of biofuel.
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- Health Care
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Housing for All Series: Sizing Up the Affordable Housing Deficit
The second article of the month-long series on Housing for All in partnership with Ashoka, examines the magnitude of the challenge, and its implications for higher education and certification for construction trades at all levels and skill fields: including technology, alternative building materials, and better planning/infrastructure needs.
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- housing
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ANDE Moves From Analysis to Action
While it still represents "pocket change" compared to the heavy hitters of private equity and microfinance institutional lending, the small and growing business investment sector is growing. This was the prevailing view from the annual Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs Conference 2011, the organization’s third such summit.
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- Investing
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Social Entrepreneurship Coming Full Circle, at Columbia’s Social Enterprise Conference
This year’s Columbia Social Enterprise Conference, on the topic of "Social Innovation in a Networked WorId," left me almost certain that the social entrepreneurship movement is currently witnessing such a full circle moment on several fronts, most notably, when it comes to our collective understanding of what a "networked world" means.
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- Social Enterprise
