NextBillion - A WDI Publication

Bangladeshi Microfinance Firm ASA Gets Largest Funding Of $125 Million

Bangladesh is the home of grameen banking. Now the country will have another distinction with a microfinance institution (MFI) headquartered in that country receiving the world’s largest ever funding for an MFI. ASA International, which has presence in Asia and Africa, will receive about $125 million from Catalyst Microfinance Investors (CMI), a leading private equity fund focused on investing in microfinance institutions on a commercial basis. CMI has achieved its final privat...

Source

VC Circle (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

Online philanthropy markets: From ’Feel-Good’ giving to effective social investing?’

Online platforms like GlobalGiving, Kiva, Network for Good, GiveIndia, HelpArgentina, and so many more - hold the potential to transform the quality and quantity of resources available for domestic and international development. But can they realise that potential? Can they really revolutionise philanthropy? With support from the Aspen Institute’s Nonprofit Sector Research Fund, Keystone has undertaken a research project to answer these questions. Our breakthrough study ...

Source

Keystone Accountability (link opens in a new window)

A fair division of the spoils of charity

Intel hit the headlines early this year when its relationship with One Laptop Per Child, a non-profit project providing cheap laptops to children in developing countries, came to an abrupt end. Nicholas Negroponte, the non-profit’s founder, accused Intel of, among other things, promoting its own version, the Classmate laptop, which was designed for developing countries. The acrimonious end to this collaboration highlights the dangers for companies, non-profits and no...

Source

Financial Times (link opens in a new window)

Technoserve Launches Nonprofit Channel on YouTube

TechnoServe has launched a nonprofit channel on YouTube that will feature some of the entrepreneurs participating in the organization?s business plan competitions, as well as other videos highlighting TechnoServe?s impact in various sectors and countries around the world. The channel launches with seven entrepreneur profiles from TechnoServe?s Believe Begin Become national business plan competition in Tanzania. The c...

Source

Press Release

Soros Economic Development Fund, Omidyar Network and Google.org Launch Small to Medium Enterprise In

NEW YORK, (February 19, 2008) ? The Soros Economic Development Fund (SEDF), Omidyar Network, and Google.org announced today a new $17 million Small to Medium Enterprise Investment Company for India to create job opportunities and spur greater economic participation for a larger segment of the population. This joint Investment Company will provide capital to small and medium businesses in underserved markets. Investment to Target ?Missing Middle? Between Microfinance a...

Source

Google Press Center (link opens in a new window)

Do-Gooder Finance

These days, doing good is good business, right? Tell that to the venture capitalists. When they hear about a for-profit company driven by a social mission, their refrain is still the same: You need to focus more on profits. How are we going to get our 30 percent returns? Banks often sing the same tune; few are willing to back ventures with unconventional business models, at least not without exorbitant interest rates or risky personal guarantees. Tim Freundlich, a director at the Cal...

Source

Inc Magazine (link opens in a new window)

Connecting the Poor With World Class Healthcare

C.K. Prahalad, author of The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid; Eradicating Poverty through Profit, has long championed the notion that business, rather than government hand-outs, represents the most effective solution to poverty. At the recent TiE Entrepreneurship Summit in New Delhi, Devi Prasad Shetty, chairman of Narayana Hrudayalaya, a pediatric heart hospital in Bangalore, offered an example of Prahalad’s principles at work in health care. The hospital operates a low-cos...

Source

LiveMint (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

Grameen Bank’s loans to US poor

Bangladesh’s Grameen Bank has made its first loans in New York in an attempt to bring its pioneering micro-finance techniques to the tens of millions of people in the world’s richest country who have no bank account. The bank’s entry into the US, its first in a developed market, comes after mainstream banks’ credibility has been hit by the mortgage meltdown and many people are turning to fringe financial institutions offering loans at exorbitant interest rates.

Source

Financial Times (link opens in a new window)