April 5, 2011, 12:26 pm
By Nicole Wallace
Oxford, England
Organizations that run social-purpose businesses necessarily have to make choices between their social missions and financial return, Muhammad A. (Rumee) Ali, an official at BRAC, told participants at the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship.
The anti-poverty group, which was founded in Bangladesh almost 40 years ago and now works throughout South Asia and Africa, didn’t set out to start businesses, he said. Instead they grew out of the organization’s microfinance work.
Early on, the charity made loans to farmers to allow them to buy cows, as a way to increase their families’ income. But because the farmers could only sell the milk in their small, often isolated villages, the loans led to an oversupply of milk and pushed prices down, making it difficult for the farmers to repay their loans.
“So we set up almost 100 chilling stations all over the …
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April 5, 2011, 12:22 pm
By Nicole Wallace
Oxford, England
When the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation started a $400-million program to make investments related to its programs, the fund set up a process that encourages program officers to look at investments as a potential tool in their work — but also forces them to weigh the social and financial returns involved, Andrew Farnum, senior program investment officer at the foundation, told participants at the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship.
All of the investments focus on the foundation’s areas of interest – education in the United States, international development, global health – and are the result of close collaboration between program and investment officers. Since the program was announced in late 2009, the Seattle foundation has made investments totaling $150-million.
When a program officer suggests a potential investment, the investment team analyzes…
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April 1, 2011, 11:28 am
By Nicole Wallace
Oxford, England
A discussion of the internal struggles that social-change leaders face drew a lineup of humanitarian heavy hitters here at the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship.
The Archbishop Emeritus Desmond M. Tutu talked about facing very low points during the fight against apartheid in South Africa— weeping, and being angry at God, asking how he could allow such terrible things to happen.
One of the things that sustained him, Archbishop Tutu said, was being part of a larger community of faith. He talked about meeting a nun who lived in the woods in California, who often started to pray at 2 a.m.
“She said, ‘You know, I pray for you by name,’” recalled Archbishop Tutu. “And I said, ‘Here I am being prayed for at two in the morning in the woods in California. What chance does the apartheid government stand?’”
Joe Madiath, the founder of Gram Vikas, a…
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March 31, 2011, 9:09 am
By Nicole Wallace
Oxford, England
Lately, microfinance has been attracting attention for all the wrong reasons.
The Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship started off here March 30 with a discussion of what lessons social entrepreneurs can draw from the controversy.
Microfinance—which Stephan Chambers, chairman of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, called “the undisputed star of our movement”—involves small loans that allow poor entrepreneurs in developing countries to start businesses.
Accusations of abusive practices, as well as borrowers who have taken out multiple loans and whose debt far exceeds their ability to pay, have led some politicians in India to exhort borrowers to stop making payments. Hugely profitable initial public offerings of for-profit microfinance institutions have led critics to question whether investors are getting rich at the expense of the poor….
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March 31, 2011, 8:41 am
By Nicole Wallace
Oxford, England
A woman gathers jatropha, which will be used to generate biofuel by a company in India.
A growing number of nonprofit organizations are working to help small and growing businesses in developing countries expand as a way to improve the standard of living for local residents—a topic that will be discussed here at the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship.
One of the challenges in that work is that the needs of the business owners and of investors don’t always line up. But a type of financing in which investors receive a percentage of the business’s revenue has the potential to help solve that, says Randall T. Kempner, executive director of the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs, in Washington.
“In most emerging markets, company owners are very reticent…
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March 30, 2011, 10:24 am
By Nicole Wallace
Oxford, England
Some 800 nonprofit leaders, grant makers, investors, and academics have gathered on Oxford University’s 900-year-old campus to grapple with new approaches to social problems.
The Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship focuses on innovative strategies that can expand with stable sources of funding. Also on the agenda are the closely related fields of social enterprise and social investing, which embrace business as a tool for change.
March 19, 2011, 7:36 pm
By Nicole Wallace
Washington
Internet gifts made after the earthquake in Haiti made up a good portion of the increase in giving last year, according to a new study released here at the Nonprofit Technology Conference that analyzes online fund raising and advocacy at 40 national charities.
The 2011 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study was published by M+R Strategic Services, a fund-raising consulting company in Washington, and the Nonprofit Technology Network, in Portland, Ore.
The total amount of money the groups collected online was 14 percent higher in 2010 than in the previous year. When international aid groups were excluded from the analysis, the increase was 10 percent.
The number of online gifts, rather than the average size of the gifts, fueled the increase.
The number of Internet gifts the groups received increased 7 percent in 2010, but the amount of the average donation increased by only …
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March 18, 2011, 11:00 pm
By Nicole Wallace
Washington
Organizations, whether they are nonprofit or for-profit, spend a lot of time analyzing why failed projects didn’t work, but very seldom devote energy to figuring out why the successful ones do, Dan Heath, co-author of Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, told participants here at the Nonprofit Technology Conference.
Taking the time to find those “bright spots,” determine why they work, and replicating them can be a powerful strategy for change, he said.
As an example he told the story of Jerry Sternin, an official at Save the Children who tackled the problem of malnutrition among children in Vietnam in the early 1990s.
The experts said the problem was the result of multiple factors, such as poverty, the lack of access to clean water, and a poor education system. But Mr. Sternin knew that those weren’t issues that he could fix, so he looked for …
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March 18, 2011, 10:56 pm
By Nicole Wallace
Washington
More than 2,000 charity technology officials, consultants, and company representatives have gathered here for the 2011 Nonprofit Technology Conference.
Sessions will focus on a wide variety of tech topics, including social media, online activism, cloud computing, and storytelling on the Web.
October 6, 2010, 10:21 am
By Nicole Wallace
San Francisco
American society has a capital-allocation problem, Julie Sunderland, senior program investment officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, told participants here at the Social Capital Markets conference.
On the one hand, huge pools of money in the private capital markets are ruthlessly invested to maximize profit, she said. At the same time, public resources are dwindling.
“In this room, we find ourselves between those two spheres, which is both an exciting and a daunting place to be,” said Ms. Sunderland.
Even though the Gates Foundation is still at the beginning of its effort to put $400-million in investments that help advance the same goals as its grant making, the foundation is excited by the possibilities social investing offers, she said.
“If we can leverage our philanthropic capital to attract socially conscious investors and build a cadre of really compelling…
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