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Businesses Serving the Poor Need to Get Over Their Unease About Profit

Harvard Business Review

And their intuition isn't baseless: As the bottom-of-the-pyramid concept shifted into the public eye and attracted the criticism of the development sector, the standards for judging the impact of a venture aiming to serve low-income consumers seemed to get a lot tougher. The microfinance industry is a rare D and E success story.

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Funders Can Give More than Money

Harvard Business Review

percent lower than its value in 2007. 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.