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Curbing the “Impact Impostors”: The growing movement toward transparency in impact investing
Impact investing’s rising popularity has spawned some unfortunate side effects. For instance, as demand for a social component has grown among investors, so have efforts to brand standard equity investments with the impact label – even when their actual impact is negligible. In the final post of his series, Bill Burckart details the efforts of policy makers, regulators and investors to address this issue.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise
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5 Success Factors for Technology Distribution and Adoption in the Last Mile
How can innovative technologies be distributed and adopted at scale in the last mile? This is a key question driving social enterprises and nonprofits aiming to leverage the power of innovative products designed for the poor. Kopernik, a nonprofit headquartered in Indonesia, has consolidated its observations into five key factors – factors that Project Manager Tomohiro Hamakwa hopes will be useful for other enterprises hoping to make market inroads.
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- Energy, Social Enterprise
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Welcoming Cuba as an Emerging Market, ‘Lab’ for Social Enterprise
Insomuch as the Cuban people are underserved by their government on a host of vital services – from transportation to medical devices to Internet connectivity to agricultural development – the opportunities for social enterprises are enormous. Several organizations have been laying the groundwork for a new, pro-business relationship with Cuba’s government and its people.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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Twitter Top Ten – 12/14/14: Our favorite tweets of the week
As we move one step closer to the end of the year, we’ve got a full slate of interesting tweets from the past week. They include some encouraging investments and new partnerships, important new research, and an intriguing reply from Safaricom to a recent NextBillion post. As always, if you see anything you like, be sure to retweet it.
- Categories
- Health Care, Social Enterprise
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October’s Most Viewed, Most Shared Posts on NB
The most popular and most shared articles for October focus on hybrid profit/nonprofit approaches to social enterprise, the need for smarter microfinance approaches and the re-issue of a database tracking more than $15 billion in impact fund assets.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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Open Eyes, Open Source: Peek’s low-cost ophthalmoscope looks to gain traction, expertise through collaborations
Peek Retina, a low-cost ophthalmoscope adapter, will operate on a split pricing model. NGOs and health institutions operating in low-income countries will be able to purchase the adapter at a reduced price, while it will be sold at a higher price in high-resource settings.
- Categories
- Health Care, Social Enterprise, Technology
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Learning from What Works: IFC’s new report on inclusive business includes lessons for each phase of the value chain
In its latest report, Shared Prosperity through Inclusive Business: How Successful Companies Reach the Base of the Pyramid, the IFC summarizes practical lessons from clients that successfully reach low-income people as suppliers or customers. There are lessons for each phase of the value chain that can be adapted to the context of a particular sector or region.
- Categories
- Education, Social Enterprise
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Blurring the Boundaries: How impact investing is shifting paradigms in the public, philanthropic and nonprofit sectors
As impact investing has grown, it has begun to reshape traditional approaches to financing socially focused initiatives – sometimes to the point where paradigms start to shift. In part two of his series on new frontiers in impact investing, William Burckart discusses the implications of these changes for the public, philanthropic and nonprofit sectors.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise