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Accion International launches $10 million investment vehicle, Venture Lab
BANGALORE: In a further boost for social venture investing in India, microfinance and investment firm Accion International has launched its $10 million investment vehicle, Venture Lab, which is focused on providing seed capital to organisations that promote financial inclusion.
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- impact investing
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Weekly Roundup: A Look at the Recent Impact Investing Conversation (Cacophony)
Impact investing’s presence in the news and online discussions seemed to grow exponentially this week and last week. Here are just a few stories that breathed optimism into the impact investing field by speaking to the associated markets crossed our desks.
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- Impact Assessment
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What Impact Investing Could Do For Health Care
In his TedMed talk last week, where he called for a renewed focus on improving root causes of health problems rather than waiting until they cause full blown illnesses, Sandeep Kishore noted this somewhat startling statistic: Of the 30 years of average life-expectancy gains the United States made in the last century, a surprisingly small amount of that average increase--just five years--stems from improvements in the sort of medical care we get in hospitals. The rest of those gains came from other sources, like improvements in water quality and sanitation, vaccinations, and other improvements in public health.
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- Health Care
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- impact investing
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Looking to Frontier Markets for Next Big Thing in Investing
The difficulty with investing in the next big thing is that it is often not recognized as that until after it has become a current or former big thing. Before its arrival, it tends to be seen only as a crazy, risky thing or nothing at all. Emerging-market portfolio managers specialize in finding the next big thing. But after the transformation of many economies in Asia and Latin America in the past two decades and the strong returns and mainstream popularity of their markets, what’s left to be found?
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- impact investing
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NexThought Monday: Complexity is the New Black
NYT columnist David Brooks recently called on social enterprise types to take a dose of realism. I argue it’s time to accept full responsibility for changing politics as part of social impact. If in attempting to improve some economic or social aspect of people’s lives we aren’t also improving their political standing and the rule of law, any economic or social impact remains temporary.
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- Education, Social Enterprise
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- impact investing
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Tools of the Trade: Building a Robust Deal Pipeline of Impact Companies in Emerging Economies – Part 3
What are the biggest lessons learned when it comes to finding high-quality companies in emerging markets? I posed this final question to our virtual panel of impact investing leaders who recommended teaming up with other investors to providing appropriate financing, making sure to select companies with a core social/environmental mission, embracing creativity, and embedding capacity building into the process.
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- Environment, Social Enterprise
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- impact investing
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Morgan Stanley Offering Advisors Sustainable Investing Platform
Morgan Stanley Smith Barney is launching a platform for its financial advisors to offer clients investments with positive social and environmental impact in what appears to be a major push to offer sustainable investing to mainstream investors.Although many broker-dealers allow their advisors to offer sustainable investments to retail clients, few have specific advisor platforms for that purpose. MSSB made an announcement today about the new platform at the U.S. State Department-sponsored Global Impact Economy Forum.
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- impact investing
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At GPF, Finding a Way (or Making One) for Foundations to Impact Invest
Family foundations are often considered the low-hanging fruit of impact investing: their mission-driven philosophies combined with their perceived nimbleness make them ideal candidates to become first movers and concept-provers. However, panelists at the Global Philanthropy Forum discussed the barriers that exist even for them when trying to put their money towards companies that create positive impacts.
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