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Columbia Social Enterprise Conference Preview: Investing in Social Innovation
KL Felicitas Foundation began in 2000 with a vision to scale social innovation through impact investing and support social enterprises everywhere along the spectrum from the seed stage to start-ups that are rapidly expanding. The co-founders will be on the panel "Impact Investors Spreading Social Innovation"at the conference this Friday.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
- Tags
- impact investing
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Calling Africa’s Social Entrepreneurs
Africa may seem to be a bit lost on the inclusive-market-social-entrepreneurship-map. Most big MFI funds have only small portfolios in the area, and the BIG success stories cited are often from India. But there’s a LOT going on. A team from Queen’s University has set out to find out how much, what, and where - and will make their insights public.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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Taking Stock of IRIS
There is no EBITDA equivalent for social impact. The Global Impact Investing Network’s Impact Reporting and Investment Standards is one solution, but there are still questions. One potential breakthrough case study examining the framework in action will try to answer those questions at the 2011 Social Enterprise Conference at Columbia University.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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Microfinance at a Crossroads: Balancing Good Intentions with Critical Industry Structuring
As the microfinance industry matures, the cracks in the model have become more apparent. When an idea built from good intentions scales, hidden costs begin to grow and the call for more structure becomes louder. These cracks are not just on one side of the equation, and need to be addressed through collective effort by borrowers and lenders.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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Why Should a Mainstream For-Profit Company Pursue an In-Kind BoP Partnership?
Many entrepreneurs and funders at SOCAP11 are skeptical about partnerships - and rightly so. But sometimes all the work to make partnerships click pays off. In the case of an ongoing partnership between UNICEF and for-profit Frog Design, the impact results in Malawi and Zambia include a 30% increase in early diagnosis of HIV/AIDS in children.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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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.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
- Tags
- impact investing
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Social Entrepreneurship Takes Off in Brazil
From 2001 to 2009, poverty rates dropped from 35.2 percent of the total population to 21.4 percent. Yet, that still leaves more than 40 million Brazilians below the poverty line. But over the past few years, leading Brazilian-based organizations have been cultivating social or inclusive business models.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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Applying Behavioral Economics to the Developing World
Complex design requirements, non-existent supply chain routes, extreme poverty - these are all unique issues that entrepreneurs have to combat when developing or producing products/services for the BoP. But what happens when the your client base acts irrationally or doesn’t follow the ’model’ you’ve based your business on?
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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