Dan Shine

WDI Facilitates Rockefeller Fdn. Convening

WDI is coordinating and facilitating an Aug. 28 convening with the Rockefeller Foundation staff and other partner grantees working, along with the Institute, on the impact enterprise project.

WDI Research Manager Sateen Sheth, WDI Senior Research Fellow Ted London and WDI Executive Director Robert Kennedy will be in New York City to facilitate the meeting. The goal of the convening is to help the Rockefeller Foundation synthesize the findings from partner grantees and assist them in determining how to move forward.

WDI, along with others, is evaluating the impact enterprise sector in the developing world to give the foundation insights into how they can accelerate the development of the sector going forward. Impact enterprises are financially self-sustainable and scalable ventures that actively work towards producing significant positive changes in BoP markets for the well being of people, their communities, and the broader environment.

WDI has developed some initial hypotheses around influence factors that affect impact enterprises, and has performed a deeper analysis on impact enterprises – including developing a database to help it collect and analyze the data.

There is on-going interest in better understanding how to increase the size and scope of the pool of impact enterprises. But a lack of clarity makes it difficult to identify impact enterprises with the most promise and provide targeted support to facilitate their growth. WDI’s work, along with other grantees, will give the Rockefeller Foundation a roadmap for future potential investments and engagement strategies for promoting venture development that serves the base of the pyramid.

In addition to conducting research for the project, Rockefeller Foundation contracted with WDI to be the coordinating partner for this project. In this role, WDI has been helping align the efforts of all the partners to ensure the multiple work streams achieve Rockefeller’s overall objectives related to the search process.

The August convening is the second for the group. The WDI team met with the Rockefeller Foundation staff and the other grantees in New York in March.

This is the new blog Content

Categories
Uncategorized
Tags
Base of the Pyramid, William Davidson Institute