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How Can I Start My Own Business?

Strategy Driven

Whether your idea for your small business is one you have fleshed out on your own, or one you’ve developed with the help of family and friends, make sure it’s a solid one. Develop a Clear Business Plan. There are numerous online resources available that outline the proper steps for developing such a plan.

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How to Raise Money as a Business

Strategy Driven

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?

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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]

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Can Impact Investing Avoid the Failures of Microfinance?

Harvard Business Review

Morgan projected up to $1T in investment would be deployed this decade — which would make impact investing twice the size of official development aid to the world’s less develop countries (as defined by the United Nations) , presuming historic levels of aid stayed constant since 2010. Lessons from Microfinance.

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Learning from Microfinance's Woes

Harvard Business Review

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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Guest Post: An Entrepreneur's Thoughts on Market Incentives & Foreign Aid

Mills Scofield

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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Making Microfinance More Effective

Harvard Business Review

A major challenge for international development efforts is determining which financial tools provide durable buffers against such setbacks. 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.