You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Calvert Foundation’ tag.
> Posted by Alex Counts, President and CEO, Grameen Foundation
With increasing regularity, I hear people talking about a new concept: deploying funds to earn profit while at the same time solving complex social and environmental problems, also known as impact investing. One article that stood out for me, and in fact prompted me to write this, is “Good Investments” by Dan Morrell in the Harvard Business School Alumni Bulletin. At one point the author writes: “What impact investing really needs, all agree, are pioneers.”
Impact investing advocates can sometimes give the impression that they have “outsmarted poverty” (and other societal problems) by discovering the need for this profit-making approach, one that allows high net worth individuals to further increase their assets while also having (in the words of another impact investor quoted in the HBS article) a “fabulous social impact.”
Count me as someone who does not feel that what “impact investing” needs now are “pioneers” per se. Rather, it needs pragmatic, risk-taking, deeply curious, and disciplined people with access to funding who can work collaboratively to move an old idea forward, bearing in mind the lessons of the past and the opportunities of the present.
In fact, the actual pioneers of impact investing began laying the groundwork for this latest incarnation decades ago. Think of the Ford Foundation’s work in the 1960s to establish, legitimize, and get U.S. government policy support for Program Related Investments, the “Philanthropy at Five [Percent]” movement in nineteenth century America and England, the Russell Sage Foundation’s financing of low-income housing in New York in the early 1900s, or, in more recent times, the Calvert Foundation, just to name a few.
Or simply consider the modern microfinance industry and how an ecosystem of financing mechanisms – including dozens of “microfinance investment vehicles” (MIVs) – grew up around it in the 1990s and 2000s. Even today, according to an important study by the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) and JPMorgan Social Finance, close to 40 percent of impact investments are in microfinance institutions (MFIs) or funds. Microfinance is the largest single sector for receiving impact investments, and is larger than its two closest competitors combined. Clearly there are strong linkages between microfinance and impact investing, and additional opportunities for sharing lessons.
> Posted by Shari Berenbach, Director, Office of Microenterprise Development at USAID
This post is part of the Center for Financial Inclusion’s Expert Exchange: Building A Movement Toward Financial Inclusion by 2020, cultivating conversation around the goal of reaching full financial inclusion by 2020. For further questions about this series, write to , Fellow, Center for Financial Inclusion at ACCION International.
There is a wonderful Dr. Seuss book that I used to read to my daughter when she was little. I think the spirit of the book captures the critical place that microfinance finds itself in right now. It’s called Yertle the Turtle and other Stories.
When I was CEO of the Calvert Foundation, I began to read the book as a metaphor for my own work, and I see that even more strongly now from my vantage point as Director of the Office of Microenterprise Development at USAID.
In the book, Yertle plays an eponymous king whose kingdom is the size of a small pond. He convinces the turtles in his pond to stack themselves underneath him so that he can see further and expand his kingdom. At each height, Yertle looks around and declares, “I’m ruler of all that I see.” His world continues to expand, and his vision for his kingdom grows to fit that world. Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Lisa Hall, President & CEO of Calvert Foundation
This post is part of the Center for Financial Inclusion’s Expert Exchange: Building A Movement Toward Financial Inclusion by 2020, cultivating conversation around the goal of reaching full financial inclusion by 2020. For further questions about this series, write to , Fellow, Center for Financial Inclusion at ACCION International.
In September, I had the opportunity to participate in a dialogue with more than 45 other participants as part of a roundtable hosted by ACCION’s Center for Financial Inclusion. The purpose of this new blog is to continue the conversation we started that day – and I am honored to be the first to post here.
At Calvert Foundation, we often talk about impact investing as a virtuous circle, one that creates empowerment, opportunity, and engagement by connecting investors, underprivileged individuals, and communities. This connection – to me – is the ultimate goal of financial inclusion. It’s about a connected circle of people, with mutual benefit for all the stakeholders involved, and with clients at the center. Read the rest of this entry »
Facebook
Twitter
Recent Comments