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How to Scale Community Impact With a Market-Based Approach
"In a social business, community impact comes first," was one of the fundamental insights at the first Community Impact Development Group meeting hosted by Ashoka and the Siemens Stiftung last year. But, what do we understand by Community Impact? Why is it so critical to systems change? What are the diverse strategies that best achieve it?
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- Impact Assessment
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Engaging Peer-to-Peer Networks for Enterprise Selection: A New Pilot VC Model for the Impact Sector
Ross Baird, executive director of Village Capital (VilCap), identified one of the sector’s main problems: even though there are over 300 funds that label themselves as impact funds, fewer than five will invest in deals that are $250,000 or less. VilCap aims to radically democratize this mismatch between investors and impact enterprises.
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- Impact Assessment, Investing
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- venture capital
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From Occupy Wall St. to Impact Investing, 2 Visions of Markets at Net Impact 2011
As the Occupy Wall Street protesters continued their encampment in Portland near the Net Impact 2011 venue last weekend, it became difficult to reconcile two visions of international markets. Still, speakers posited that concepts of global development and markets were merging fast, and offered the best solution to reducing economic inequality.
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- Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise
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Markets of the Poor: Limits and Opportunities
Marketing socially useful products to the poor offers only limited business opportunities. Still, there are some profitable opportunities and we need creative entrepreneurs to design the right business models to serve the poor. To profitably serve the poor, firms need to make the cost-quality trade-off to make the products affordable by the poor.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
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Two Ways to Kill Potential: Liberia and Cameroon
Earlier this month, two western African countries held presidential elections. On the surface, they have little in common ? one country recently emerged from a brutal civil war and has an abysmal economy; the other has been peaceful for decades and enjoys abundant revenue streams. And yet both countries are classic stories of wasted potential.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
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In Ahmedabad, Dharavi’s Redevelopment Model of a ’Slum-free’ City
In keeping with the forward-looking innovation that runs through the city’s blood, a new project launched in July aims to make Ahmedabad a "slum-free city." But a top-down approach leaping from slums to high-rises misses the need for incremental steps to integrate the urban poor - how they live, work and socialize - into the formal housing market.
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- Impact Assessment
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What Global Development Needs to Make an iPhone? Start With Storytelling
Esther Duflo. Abhijit Bhanerjee. Dean Karlan. These are household names in global development thanks to their leadership for more evidence-based project design and implementation. Here’s another name: Marc Maxson, a consultant with GlobalGiving who helped create and implement its Storytelling Project, which goes beyond eliminating selection bias.
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- Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise
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NextThought Monday: New Modes of Mobility for the Poor
Disabilities perpetuate a poverty trap and push the poor further from access to education, employment and healthcare. Most policies, programs and entrepreneurial initiatives in India have focused on providing employment. Little attention has been paid to helping the disabled - in particular, the poor - become more mobile themselves.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Transportation
- Tags
- transportation