Impact Investing
Across the Returns Continuum
Omidyar Network has built a framework for pursuing investment opportunities that takes into account not only firm-level impact but also market-level impact.
Tag: Microfinance
Economic Development
The Future of Banking for the Poor: Lessons from India
How combining “high-tech” and “high-touch” support can improve global financial health.
Global Issues
Sharing Solutions to Poverty
Efforts to battle poverty in the United States can learn a lot from the developing world, and vice versa. Thankfully some of the barriers between these traditionally isolated domains are falling.
sponsored
Scaling Up Inclusive Markets
More poor households benefit when the private and social sectors work together to build better environments for inclusive business.
Impact Investing
What Impact Investors Can Learn from the Microfinance Industry
Substitute the word “impact” for “social performance,” and current debates in the investment community sound exactly like the ones the microfinance industry had 10 years ago. The investor community can learn from microfinance’s successful efforts to set standards for non-financial returns—the “other bottom line.”
Economic Development
Mismatch: How Income and Expense Volatility Are Undermining Households
Even when households are saving a lot, growing income and expense volatility mean building assets is harder than ever.
Economic Development
The Hidden Lives of America’s Poor and Middle Class
The financial lives of Americans have dramatically changed. The programs, policies, and products designed to help them need to change too.
Review
Social Entrepreneurship
Lending Out Wisdom
A memoir by the founder of Kiva highlights the passion that marks the life of a social entrepreneur.
Excerpt
Microfinance
In Their Own Hands
How one, simple idea empowered communities worldwide: Jeffrey Ashe recounts the development of Saving for Change.
Socially Responsible Business
Financial Disruption and Giving Back from the Start
New financial tech companies need to adopt a shared value or triple-bottom-line approach.