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Needed: A ‘Facebook’ for Impact Investing: Why the Sector Needs to Embrace Failure – And Also Produce Some Inspiring Successes
Impact investing has had some notable success stories, but no true breakout companies that – like Facebook – can inspire public attention and draw more entrepreneurs and investors to the sector. That's a problem, says Vox Capital director Daniel Izzo – as is the fear of failure, both financial and social, among investors. He discusses these challenges, and some possible solutions, in this video Q&A.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing, Social Enterprise
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Are Governments ‘Paying for Failure’ With Social Impact Bonds?
Three years ago, New York City launched an ambitious and unprecedented social policy experiment at its jail on Rikers Island. Thousands of teenage inmates began receiving group therapy aimed at improving their moral reasoning by addressing their beliefs and thought processes in a step-by-step treatment. The goal was to reduce the number of repeat offenses once the inmates were released. Academic studies using the method, known as moral reconation therapy, had reported success in reducing recidivism. Still, no one had ever scaled up these studies to accommodate anything like the 9,240 inmates the four-year Rikers Island program aimed to serve. This month, the program is coming to an abrupt end.
- Categories
- Environment, Impact Assessment
- Tags
- failure, impact bonds, public policy
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The Power of Texting: How a Simple Text Message Can Make the Difference Between Success and Failure for Social Initiatives
Mobile phones are increasingly prevalent throughout the world, and researchers have found that sending text message reminders can help people follow through with their intentions, significantly increasing the success of development interventions. Roxanne Bauer explores the impact of text reminders on malaria treatment and savings initiatives, and discusses the science behind the approach.
- Categories
- Health Care, Impact Assessment, Technology, Telecommunications
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New App for Managing HIV Treatment Failure
A health informatics specialist in Rwanda has developed a computer-based application to help clinicians reduce medical errors in managing HIV treatment failure.
- Categories
- Health Care, Technology
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Innovation to Impact: At Skoll, exploring why so many global health interventions have failed to expand beyond the pilot level
Participants in a discussion at the Skoll World Forum agreed that when it comes to strengthening health systems, alternative financing models which support long-term, systems-level approaches, could have large payoffs.
- Categories
- Health Care, Impact Assessment
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Avoiding Death by a Thousand Cuts: How a Young Social Enterprise Weathered a Series of Microfailures
David Santillán Giles thought everything was on track with his young social enterprise. But he soon found himself dealing with a string of unforced errors that would put his company in jeopardy. He discusses these mistakes and what he learned from them in the latest post in our series on failure in social enterprise.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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Study: Zambia’s Malaria Success Story Masks Basic Health Failures
A new study reveals that while Zambia has made great progress against malaria over the past decade or so it was losing ground on many other health needs like basic child immunizations and maternal health care.
- Categories
- Health Care
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Nextbillion’s Most Viewed, Shared Posts in February: Failure, Glorious Failure
The old adage that it’s not news if everything goes according to plan – that applies to blog sites like ours, too. And so, as per usual, stories about failure led the list of our most-viewed and most-shared posts of February. But there was no reveling in schadenfreude here. Rather, we opened the month with a series on what we could learn from failures, brought to us by a burgeoning global organization that has failure right in its name.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
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