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Making Markets Work for the Poor: How the Gates Foundation Uses Program-Related Investments
At the insistence of Bill himself, the foundation made its first “program-related investment” in 2009. Since then, it has made nearly 50 loans, equity investments, and guarantees to further the foundation’s charitable purpose, totaling more than $1 billion. In the last seven years, the world’s largest foundation has become one of the world’s largest impact investors.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing
- Tags
- impact investing
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NexThought Monday: Fending Off ‘Pilotitis’ in Global Tech
In 2008, as many as 80 NGOs were testing consumer-facing mobile health (mHealth) programs in Uganda - all at once. But none of the pilots were scalable, interoperable, or meaningfully coordinated. Uganda is far from alone. A World Bank study in 2013 found nearly 500 disparate mHealth programs being implemented around the world – particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia – without evidence of scaling or integration. A preventive treatment of sorts has arrived to help organizations address these "technology for development" problems: The Principles for Digital Development.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Technology
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GIIN Launches Annual Impact Investor Survey 2016
The Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) today published the sixth edition of its Annual Impact Investor Survey, which signals continued market growth and an increasing interest in impact investing opportunities. With a sample that comprises 158 of the world’s leading impact investors, the survey provides detailed insight into investor perceptions and a number of key market variables such as types of investors, the number and size of investments made, target returns, and impact measurement practices. During 2015, respondents committed a total of $15.2 billion to impact investments and, as of year’s end, managed over $77 billion in impact assets. Impact investments continue to be made across different geographies, a range of sectors, and multiple asset classes.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing
- Tags
- impact investing
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How One Investment Fund Is Tackling America’s ‘Glaring Inequality’ Problem
Acumen, a New York-based nonprofit global venture fund, today announced it has begun investing in US startups aimed at serving underprivileged Americans.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing
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NexThought Monday – Seeking Scale: The Unexplored Power of Standardized Tools and Customized Implementation
Ted London has been working in the base of the pyramid domain since 1989. During that time, he's engaged with many hundreds of entrepreneurs and business leaders seeking to develop and launch enterprises in BoP markets. He's seen several success and many failures. It lead him to develop the Partnership Ecosystem Framework, a tool that helps prepare the enterprise for building the cross-organizational collaborations needed for sustainability at scale.
- Categories
- Education, Impact Assessment
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Viewpoint: The Next Frontier in Social Impact Measurement Isn’t Measurement at All
If we want social capital markets to fund the social sector effectively, we need to use social impact data effectively when making investment decisions. And investment decision-making almost always requires that we compare social impact data across locations, programs, or organizations. This is difficult, because contexts, missions, definitions, measurement approaches, and values differ. It’s always apples to oranges, and this “comparison problem” not only affects good decision-making, but also our ability to report on impact at the investment portfolio level.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
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NEPC Survey: Endowments and Foundations Don’t Expect to Sacrifice Performance with Impact Investments
NEPC, LLC (www.nepc.com), one of the industry’s largest independent, institutional investment consulting firms, today published the results of its Q1 2016 NEPC Endowment and Foundation Poll. These results show that 86% of asset owners that currently use impact investing expect these allocations to equal or outperform the overall market.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing
- Tags
- impact investing
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Weekly Roundup: Healthy Debate and Unhealthy Economics at Unite for Sight
I went to a global health conference last weekend and an economics lesson broke out. OK, that’s a bit of an oversimplification. A lot more than economics was discussed at the 13th annual Unite for Sight Global Health & Innovation Conference at Yale University. It’s just that as I scurried from session to session around the campus, I kept hearing about the scarcity and/or misapplication of money.
- Categories
- Health Care, Impact Assessment
- Tags
- public health
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