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NextThought Monday Gearing Up for SOCAP11: Milaap’s Service-Focused Journey
Anoj Viswanathan is co-founder of Milaap, a pioneering online platform that enables people across the world to lend to India’s working poor. He drew inspiration from Lilla Watson?s quote, ?if you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together."
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- Finance
- Tags
- microfinance
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Friday Roundup ? 8/26/11: Profits Without Social Compromises
Much literal and virtual ink has been spilled this week on the blurring of lines between what constitutes nonprofit and for-profit in the social space. Of course many for-profits are, not by choice, shoehorned into nonprofit status. While nonprofits, witnessing the success and efficiency of profit seeking social ventures, have changed course.
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- Uncategorized
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Unlikely Partnerships in the Social Sector
In the final part of my three-part interview with Ashoka’s Europe director Felix Oldenburg on how to create a large and sustained impact, he shared his thoughts on how to use existing, or some may call them "old" social structures -churches, welfare systems, and foundations, among others - to scale innovations.
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- Uncategorized
- Tags
- partnerships
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Mixing Oil and Water in SME Development
Like oil and water, many would argue major energy companies don’t mix with advancing social impact. However, in an industry better known for oil spills and fat profits, the Shell Foundation is shattering stereotypes by providing financing for energy and infrastructure organizations too small for commercial funding and too large for microfinance.
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- Education, Impact Assessment
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Extreme Makeover: Social Enterprise Edition
Many nonprofit organizations are awakening to the idea that a for-profit model can often generate the same intended social impacts on a scale unimaginable while locked into a NPO state of mind. The road to financial sustainability is a rocky one; here are two stories of nonprofits that navigated that road to both profit and increased impact.
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- Social Enterprise
- Tags
- impact investing
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Bangladesh’s Mobile Tech Surge, What It Means for Development
While mobile phones have increasingly become ubiquitous in developing countries, Bangladesh has taken the technology’s capabilities a step further. Many new initiatives have leveraged the sheer number of people using mobile phones: 76.4 million in Bangladesh. Neighboring countries have lagged behind in leveraging mobiles for development.
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- Health Care
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Accelerating BoP Development at the Intersection of CSR & Impact Investing
Innovation in base of the pyramid development flourishes at the intersections. Through a new collaborative model, the BoP management strategy and innovation firm, I-DEV International, focuses on the intersection of multi-national corporate interests and impact investing to build lasting, profitable, and high-impact SMEs at the BoP.
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- Uncategorized
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The BOP and Corruption
Focus on BOP has strong economic potential and the power to alter markets; can the same theory have similar impact on economics of corruption?How do you define the BOP of corruption? The bottom end of this pyramid is made up of the ordinary middle class Indians. If 45 percent have paid a bribe then it has to be the great Indian middle class.
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- Uncategorized
