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How to Raise Money as a Business

Strategy Driven

This plan needs to clearly outline your company’s goals, operations, and financial projections. For some products such as a cash advance loan , this may be available in just a few days or hours, but it often comes with a high interest rate. What are some tips for preparing to raise money?

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Women as Microfinance Leaders, Not Just Clients

Harvard Business Review

We're a network of microfinance organizations; we exist to share practices and develop the leadership skills required by a sector that has grown up fast. And as you might be aware, microfinance is a phenomenon that, while it did not set out to be "for women," has mainly turned out to be.

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How One Startup Developed a Sales Model That Works in Emerging Markets

Harvard Business Review

Our flagship products are wood-burning stoves that generate electricity from fire while reducing toxic smoke emissions by 90%. Customers have myriad channels to discover new products and shop at outdoor gear retailers to explore, evaluate, and choose what they need. Handi shop customers had never seen a product like ours.

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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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Can Technology End Poverty?

Harvard Business Review

Calling himself the ICT4D jester (using the development jargon for "information and communication technologies for development"), he has no shortage of material. That's easier said than done in a world where most product innovations are geared toward the rich. But I'm hardly a naysayer when it comes to tech.

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Funders Can Give More than Money

Harvard Business Review

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. Today, Roger is president of the school, elected by his peers.

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It Takes a Village to Raise an Entrepreneur

Harvard Business Review

These hybrids pursue a social mission while engaging in commercial activities that generate revenues that help them sustain their operations. Take, for example, the issue of economic development. Frogtek and many other hybrids sell goods and services, and rely on revenues to sustain and scale their operations.