Controversy Brews In The World of Microfinance

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SKS Microfinance wants to go public, but not everyone trusts the motives behind an IPO.

In charity circles, people wondered about the motives of the Unitus board members, at least four of whom had invested in SKS Microfinance themselves and thus would reap profits from the I.P.O.

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The Financial Access Initiative and MicroSave invites you to a free virtual conference on Reimagining Microfinance Around the World

Portfolios of the Poor: How the World’s Poor Live on $2 a Day broadened our understanding of how the global poor manage their financial lives, but how do we take these lessons and transform them into real, on-the-ground solutions for economic development? The Financial Access Initiative and MicroSave invites you to a free virtual conference on Reimagining Microfinance Around the World to address this question. On June 8-9, co-authors Daryl Collins, Jonathan Morduch, Stuart Rutherford, and Orlanda Ruthven, and MicroSave’s Graham A.N. Wright will be fielding questions and comments from conference registrants. There are plenty of ways to prepare for the conference. An inspiring introduction to the book can be seen in a podcast of Bob Christen, and key issues and findings from Portfolios research can be accessed in a series of Briefing Notes. Microfinance Podcast is also running a video series on the conference that features Sukhwinder Singh, Stuart Rutherford, Rich Rosenberg, Bill Easterly, Yaw Nyarko and Jonathan Morduch.

Registration is free! To join the virtual conference, please visit
http://microsave.org/static/content/VC-on-portfolios-of-the-poor.

Affinity search engines still coming out of the wood work

It looks like we’re not done with affinity search engines.  Here’s the latest one I spotted, called Search and Share

SearchAndShare.org Google from Search and Share on Vimeo.

Groupon Joins in Charity Drive

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The fast growing and popular deal site Groupon has joined Charity Drive, to help groups of people get together to raise money for charity.

It is a new kind of philanthropy — the digital version of the public radio pledge drive, when businesses offer to match listener donations for a period of time.

The Pershing Square Foundation, which is affiliated with Pershing Square Capital Management, an investment firm, gave a matching grant of $400,000, and DonorsChoose.org’s board of directors pitched in another $100,000. Groupon users can buy credits for half price and the foundation will match the rest — a $20 credit goes for $10, a $100 credit goes for $50 and so on. DonorsChoose.org aims to give $1 million to schools through the partnership.

On DonorsChoose.org, donors could buy 100 writing journals for a teacher in an impoverished part of Nevada, for instance, or three calculators and batteries for an algebra teacher in Mississippi.

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Twitter’s foray into social good efforts with the launch of Hope140

Last month saw the latest Twitter foray into social good efforts with the launch of the new Hope140 initiative. Its #EndMalaria campaign over the past week featured the TwitPay platform for donations, creating a new call to action for Hope140. Twitter users participated in World Malaria Day by retweeting and donating $10. The Case Foundation matched donations with a $25,000 grant.

#EndMalaria demonstrated that Twitter can be more than an awareness mechanism for non-profits. Further, Twitter is using its Promoted Tweets feature as public service vehicle, launching with two charities; Room to Read, which is campaigning to promote the building of their 10,000th library, and Partners in Health. Now Twitter’s non-profit offering provides comprehensive capabilities, from click-throughs and retweets to bona fide donations and public service announcements.

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What is “Impact Investing”?

Impact Investing is a relatively new term used to describe philanthropy and charitable giving, but it implies that these projects require a return on the investment, although return requirements are much more lenient than what a typical financial investor would demand.  Here’ s a good New York Times article that delves into the topic at length:

More often, impact investing is described by what it is not. It does not work in the same way as socially responsible investing, which excludes areas a person does not want to invest in — like tobacco or guns — through a simple screening process. Impact investing focuses more on bringing about change — helping the working poor in India buy a home, for instance.

While most of the money is going into areas like helping to reduce poverty and improving the climate, it is not philanthropy. Investors expect at least a return of their capital with an adjustment for inflation and, in many cases, a lot more than that.

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Update on One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)

It’s been slow going. About 1.6 million of the group’s laptops have been distributed to date, said Matt Keller, vice president for global advocacy at the O.L.P.C. Foundation, based in Cambridge, Mass. Today, the largest concentrations are in Uruguay, at around 400,000, and Peru, at 280,000, followed by Rwanda (110,000) and Haiti and Mongolia (15,000 each).

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The Updated CauseWorld App For The iPhone

We’ve previously written about CauseWorld, an app that offers several ways to donate while you shop.  The new and improved app now incorporates the location based check in phenomenon.  Instead of checking in for gaming purposes as one does on Foursquare and Gowalla, CauseWorld let’s you connect to stores around you so you can use the points you get for checking in to support a variety of charitable causes.

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Check out the complete review here.

More human beings today have access to a cellphone than the United Nations says have access to a clean toilet

A nice article on cell phones and the part they are playing to close the great tech divide:

The number of mobile subscriptions in the world is expected to pass five billion this year, according to the International Telecommunication Union, an intergovernmental organization. That would mean more human beings today have access to a cellphone than the United Nations says have access to a clean toilet.

And because it reaches so many people, because it is always with you, because it is cheap and sharable and easily repaired, the cellphone has opened a new frontier of global innovation.

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A cellphone app called CauseWorld has figured out a way for advertisers to turn their marketing dollars into charitable donations

The CauseWorld app offers users several ways to donate.
The CauseWorld app offers users several ways to donate.
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