article thumbnail

How to Raise Money as a Business

Strategy Driven

You should also prepare some insights about your market and competition. 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 ways to raise money as a business?

article thumbnail

Innovating The Brick-and-Mortar Injustice Infrastructure

Mills Scofield

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]

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

Can Impact Investing Avoid the Failures of Microfinance?

Harvard Business Review

Impact investors over the past decade largely focused on proving that impact investments could achieve a “market rate” or above return profile. Making something wildly profitable will of course attract the attention of financial markets, and thus increase the chances it will scale effectively. Lessons from Microfinance.

article thumbnail

Making Microfinance More Effective

Harvard Business Review

While meeting this challenge is a clear priority for policy makers and donors, it is also a major profit opportunity for commercial players who can solve market failures and create real value. Micro-insurance is not at scale anywhere except when heavily subsidized by government, a market we hope technology may change in the future.

article thumbnail

The Microfinance Contagion Scenario

Harvard Business Review

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.

article thumbnail

Under Fire, Microfinance Faces Falling Out of Favor

Harvard Business Review

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.

article thumbnail

Lessons for Social Entrepreneurs from the Microfinance Crisis

Harvard Business Review

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.