The Fears Facing Low-Income Entrepreneurs
The Horizons Tracker
OCTOBER 2, 2024
Designing more adaptable and comprehensive microfinance initiatives that link investments to incremental progress towards defined success objectives and milestones. ”
Microfinance Related Topics 
I'm a bank - well, with the help of Kiva.org!
Jason Womack
SEPTEMBER 6, 2011
Intercontinental Ballistic Microfinance from Kiva Microfunds on Vimeo. What happens when 620,000 lenders fund 615,000 entrepreneurs, students, and other microfinance borrowers around the world? What is Kiva.org? Check out www. OjaiKivaClub.com and this incredible visualization. Five+ years of Kiva loan activity, in full color.
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How Can I Start My Own Business?
Strategy Driven
SEPTEMBER 2, 2020
Microfinance organizations provide small loans in order to help entrepreneurs get their business off the ground in the beginning. For more information on microfinancing, consider this article on: what is microfinance ? Microfinancing is an option for those who want to achieve their dreams but have no collateral to do so.
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How to Raise Money as a Business
Strategy Driven
APRIL 4, 2023
Some alternative sources of funding for businesses include: Grants from government agencies or private foundations Microfinance organisations that provide small loans to entrepreneurs in developing countries. What are some alternative sources of funding for businesses?
Do Teams Work Best When The Stakes Are High?
The Horizons Tracker
FEBRUARY 13, 2020
This process, which they refer to as gradualism, is commonly used in team building and training initiatives, and are also common in the field of microfinance.
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Can Impact Investing Avoid the Failures of Microfinance?
Harvard Business Review
JUNE 8, 2018
Impact investing can learn from the history of microfinance — the provision of debt and other financial services to the poor — an industry that was at a similar stage 15 years ago. Lessons from Microfinance. There are two major debates in particular about microfinance that are relevant for the impact investment industry.
Innovating The Brick-and-Mortar Injustice Infrastructure
Mills Scofield
JUNE 16, 2013
This week''s post is by Andy Posner , Co-Founder & Executive Director of Capital Good Fund ( CGF ), a non-profit microfinance organization targeting the root causes of poverty through innovative micro-loans and personal financial coaching. It’s time for us to finally put poverty out of business for good. [1]
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Learning from Microfinance's Woes
Harvard Business Review
FEBRUARY 27, 2012
A few weeks ago, I attended a lecture about microfinance, and got sucker-punched. Expecting to hear a litany of pros and cons about the business, and an exploration of good and bad models, I was instead greeted with a knockout punch: Microfinance doesn't work, at least not in the way we think it does. That's nice.
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Peer-to-Peer Microfinance: A Sustainable Solution to Poverty
Modern Servant Leader
DECEMBER 10, 2010
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The Microfinance Contagion Scenario
Harvard Business Review
JUNE 10, 2011
So far, the Andhra Pradesh (AP) microfinance crisis has largely been viewed as a local issue, with relatively little impact beyond AP or India's borders. Other microfinance crises, in Bolivia, Nicaragua, Nigeria, and Bosnia, have not spread beyond the borders of a particular country. That could likely have consequences.
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Under Fire, Microfinance Faces Falling Out of Favor
Harvard Business Review
AUGUST 1, 2011
Microfinance has come under fire in the past 18 months, triggered in part by SKS Microfinance's IPO. Critics complain that the institutions supporting microfinance have become too greedy, and many are using this as an argument to deeply regulate or, even more, cut support to microfinance operations. I hope not.
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Women as Microfinance Leaders, Not Just Clients
Harvard Business Review
MARCH 16, 2011
We're a network of microfinance organizations; we exist to share practices and develop the leadership skills required by a sector that has grown up fast. And as you might be aware, microfinance is a phenomenon that, while it did not set out to be "for women," has mainly turned out to be.
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Making Microfinance More Effective
Harvard Business Review
OCTOBER 5, 2016
The Grameen model of microfinance gained a great deal of attention in the international development field after early data showed that it was associated with high repayment and low default. Our findings are captured in a working paper which we summarize below. This model makes small loans, usually to women, without requiring collateral.
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Lessons for Social Entrepreneurs from the Microfinance Crisis
Harvard Business Review
APRIL 22, 2011
The microfinance industry has in just a few years gone from making headlines for the Nobel Peace Prize to stories about limited impact, allegedly abusive tactics, client suicides, government crackdowns, major lenders struggling with insolvency and the forcible removal of Mohammed Yunus as Managing Director of Grameen Bank.
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Guest Post: An Entrepreneur's Thoughts on Market Incentives & Foreign Aid
Mills Scofield
AUGUST 27, 2012
One of his main tasks was to structure a hedging derivative that negated foreign exchange risks so that Microfinance institutions could take safer loans from the developed world. I think that microfinance is one of those rare game changing social initiatives that manages to use market forces to drive social change.
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171 Book Review: The Social Entrepreneur’s Handbook
Chartered Management Institute
SEPTEMBER 29, 2011
Rupert is the CEO of the foundation for International Community Assistance, a leading microfinance institution. The Social Entrepreneur’s Handbook by Rupert Scofield is written to guide the aspiring social entrepreneur through the full range of activities of starting, building and running a social business. Review by David Stephens FCMI.
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Microfinance Is Good for Women, but It's Only Part of the Solution
Harvard Business Review
NOVEMBER 27, 2012
Career paths are not one-size-fits-all, yet in emerging markets, it's often assumed that microfinance — the use of small loans to foster self-reliant small businesses in a community setting — is the only path for women seeking economic opportunity. Microfinance was one issue that we considered.
Why CEOs have Liberal Arts Degrees
Mills Scofield
MAY 5, 2015
She's spending the summer in Dhaka doing microfinance. She is now the core programming director for the Brown Entrepreneurship Program and Head of Design for The Intercollegiate Finance Journal.
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70 Why CEOs have Liberal Arts Degrees
Mills Scofield
MAY 5, 2015
She's spending the summer in Dhaka doing microfinance. She is now the core programming director for the Brown Entrepreneurship Program and Head of Design for The Intercollegiate Finance Journal.
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70 Banking on Women and Girls: Key to Global Poverty Alleviation
Harvard Business Review
MARCH 8, 2011
On this 100th International Women's Day , it is right to reflect on how women have become the heart of the microfinance industry. It is easy to forget that the initial motivation for microfinance roughly 30 years ago was, to a great extent, gender neutral. Microfinance is about much more than extending credit.
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Can Technology End Poverty?
Harvard Business Review
MARCH 22, 2013
Shameran Abed, who runs BRAC's microfinance program, explains what happened: "In the first couple months, a lot of our borrowers would send the money through their mobile phones and then physically show up at the branch to check with the accountant that the money had turned up.". Immerse yourself in the details.
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Businesses Serving the Poor Need to Get Over Their Unease About Profit
Harvard Business Review
JUNE 13, 2012
The microfinance industry is a rare D and E success story. Microfinance banks, which provide desperately needed loans to low-income consumers, draw mainstream investors because of their attractive returns. The result has been explosive growth. And in D and E markets, the environment demands a very high contribution per transaction.
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How Large NGOs Are Using Data to Transform Themselves
Harvard Business Review
MAY 18, 2016
A critical part was adapting a proven model in a related field: microfinance. By increasing or jump-starting these institutions’ housing microfinance lending, Habitat aims to create robust markets for this financing that can continue on their own.
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Global Entrepreneurs Need New Funding Models
Harvard Business Review
APRIL 4, 2012
"We wanted to do this because we recognize that small enterprises are a very significant engine for development; they create employment, which tends to be more sustainable and better paid than you would find in the more informal microfinance sector," says Oxfam's Nicholas Colloff. But times have changed.
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The Innovation Mindset in Action: Shantha Ragunathan
Harvard Business Review
AUGUST 1, 2013
Sasikala, a Block Development Officer (BDO), talked to the Kodapattinam villagers about microfinance , only Shantha, of all the villagers, saw the opportunity and took action. Undeterred, Shantha persisted until she persuaded the required number of people to sign up for the microfinance project.
Funders Can Give More than Money
Harvard Business Review
JANUARY 11, 2013
Six years ago, David and Donna Allman approached Opportunity with an idea that fell outside our traditional microfinance model: to build a Community Economic Development (CED) program in Nicaragua. We know that microfinance alone will not break the poverty cycle.
Can Technology End Poverty?
Harvard Business Review
MARCH 22, 2013
Shameran Abed, who runs BRAC's microfinance program, explains what happened: "In the first couple months, a lot of our borrowers would send the money through their mobile phones and then physically show up at the branch to check with the accountant that the money had turned up.". Immerse yourself in the details.
How One Startup Developed a Sales Model That Works in Emerging Markets
Harvard Business Review
SEPTEMBER 7, 2016
Experiment #5: Microfinance Institutions. In emerging markets, microfinance has been a key economic engine in helping low-income households fund businesses and other important purchases in daily life. If our customers are liquidity constrained and risk averse to purchasing a pricey item, was there a model to solve for that?
What Makes Social Entrepreneurs Different
Harvard Business Review
JANUARY 11, 2013
Social entrepreneurs have also been some of the most attentive followers of the academic debate between the likes of Mark Pitt and Jonathan Murdoch about whether microfinance really helps reduce poverty. Prahalad's " bottom of the pyramid ," that began life as academic research. That's because the stakes are higher for social entrepreneurs.
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Scaling Up Without Losing Your Edge
Harvard Business Review
JANUARY 18, 2013
Following Abed's twist on Schumacher — "small may be beautiful, but big is necessary" — it now touches the lives of an estimated 126 million people with healthcare, education, enterprise development, microfinance and a slew of other programs. Today it runs a sprawl of surplus-generating businesses across diverse sectors.
An Approach to Ending Poverty That Works
Harvard Business Review
JANUARY 22, 2015
” Microfinance and other market-based interventions don’t generally reach them. Unfortunately, these trends still have little to no impact on the lives of a critical and chronically marginalized subset of the extreme poor around the world, those living on less than 60 to 70 cents per day. And we may have found a way to do this.
Entrepreneurship Needs to Be a Bigger Part of U.S. Foreign Aid
Harvard Business Review
AUGUST 15, 2016
.” Laudable as these may be, USAID, the State Department, and other government agencies should really be backing programs that stimulate and support scalable, innovative, job-creating businesses – the kinds of companies that are antidotes to mass unemployment and economic hopelessness, not microfinance.
How to Create Youth Jobs After Conflicts
Harvard Business Review
DECEMBER 2, 2010
Upon graduation, the governments, nonprofits, or (more recently) microfinance companies give them loans to buy tools and opens shops. Across most developing countries, there is a model for job training where youth are assisted to acquire basic skills. Unfortunately, the results of most of these government assisted projects are not stellar.
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It Takes a Village to Raise an Entrepreneur
Harvard Business Review
MAY 24, 2012
Commercial microfinance organizations are perhaps the best-known hybrid organizations, but social entrepreneurs now use hybrid models to address a diverse set of social issues that includes hunger, healthcare, economic development, environment, education, housing, culture, law, and politics.
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Transforming Rural India Through Agricultural Innovation
Harvard Business Review
FEBRUARY 21, 2014
Over 1,900 beneficiaries have established micro-enterprises for which microfinance has been facilitated. Over 6,000 people have been made functionally literate through adult literacy program. 30 children are passing through every year through its play school for the past six years.
3 Things Driving Entrepreneurial Growth in Africa
Harvard Business Review
FEBRUARY 1, 2017
Firms are realizing what microfinance has known for a while: Local self-policing groups, or village headmen who police honor codes, can hedge cash flows in far-flung places. Toyota and Yamaha have found motorbike customers through such social group structures.
How Social Entrepreneurs Can Have the Most Impact
Harvard Business Review
MAY 2, 2014
Or consider Kwabena Darko of Ghana, who helped found that country’s microfinance sector by forging a collaboration between global NGO Opportunity International , his national startup Sinapi Aba , and a myriad of village- and town-based trust groups. Amplify the voices of the constituents you seek to serve.
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The Smart Way to Make Profits While Serving the Poor
Harvard Business Review
JUNE 20, 2012
Grameen Bank, the microfinance bank in Bangladesh, is well known for its use of peer groups: Self-formed clubs of five to 10 people, usually women, share responsibility for microloans. Peer groups also drive up the size of sales transactions: A single sale aggregates the demand of many customers.
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12 Give Impact Investing Time and Space to Develop
Harvard Business Review
MARCH 17, 2014
We allowed microfinance and the venture capital industry the time and space to develop over a few decades. In impact investing, we need to find a way to place that same premium on social impact by valuing the public good being created – just like we do in early stage R&D in science, IT, health, and biotechnology.
Facebook Presence Is an Important Clue to a Social Venture's Future
Harvard Business Review
MARCH 4, 2013
This makes sense to Milaap.org , a social enterprise in Bangalore that crowdsources low-cost capital for microfinance institutions through its online platform. Similarly, Twitter followers are more numerous when the venture is active on Facebook and LinkedIn.
Using Games to Get a Handle on Bank Risk
Harvard Business Review
OCTOBER 13, 2011
Popular games also tend to spawn communities who share information and strategies about how to overcome hurdles, suggesting that peer to peer education is also possible (this has been seen in microfinance). The impact of social networks on individual behavior can also be observed.
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12 President Obama Can Make Start-Up America Succeed
Harvard Business Review
FEBRUARY 2, 2011
Microfinance (Bangladesh), securitization of revenues (Saudi Arabia), and royalty-pay-back funding (Israel) were all invented overseas. Entrepreneurship in financial services has been given a bad rap as one contributor to the economic crisis, but we desperately need innovative financing models for start-ups.
The Conference That’s Trying to Reinvent How We Network
Harvard Business Review
OCTOBER 8, 2015
When those in the group that had the job givers question pulled off their masks, they discovered that Muhammad Yunus , a Nobel Prize winner for his microfinance work, had been with them, listening carefully to all their suggestions. And it worked. Business conferences can be boring affairs, where few meaningful, lasting connections are made.
Servant Leadership Observer ? November 2010
Modern Servant Leader
NOVEMBER 18, 2010
Peer-to-Peer Microfinance: A Sustainable Solution to Poverty. To Our Military: Thank You For Your Service. Publishing The New Advanced Degree Model? Servant Leadership Observer – December 2010. Careers for Servant Leaders. The Value of Making Time for Gratitude. Know Your Social Media Hierarchy.
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