Ignacio Mas and Nicholas Sullivan Mobile Money as an Information Utility That Touches Everyone Refining the Vision for Financial Inclusion You’ve grasped the potential: mobile money can bank the unbanked in the devel- oping world. You’ve seen the reality: most mobile money schemes are still like large pilots, and the majority of people are still unbanked. Hasta la fecha, mobile money has not been as transformative

Claire Alexandre Regulators as Change Agents The term “innovation” is not naturally associated with regulation. Innovation is the purview of inventors, investors, and entrepreneurs, who search constantly for a competitive edge, pushing boundaries and taking risks. Regulators, por otro lado, are most concerned with controlling risks. They strive to preserve stability and set the conditions within which market participants compete. In specific industries, regulators

Martín J.. Fisher Real Good, Not Feel Good A Brief Guide to High-Impact Philanthropy Today, everywhere we look, we see another global challenge—from poverty and disease, to climate change and the economic meltdown. And even our own finances are not what they used to be. But we still need to do whatever we can to help the world. So now more than ever, nosotros necesitamos

Mario Morino Leap of Reason Managing to Outcomes in an Era of Scarcity For the entire sixteen years I’ve been working full-time in the social sector, a prob- lem has been gnawing at me, sometimes literally keeping me up at night. Here’s the problem in a nutshell: We don’t manage to outcomes, thus greatly diminishing our collective impact. Despite all the right intentions, the vast

Katherine Milligan and Mirjam Schöning Taking a Realistic Approach to Impact Investing Observations from the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Social Innovation What happens when you bring together 20 of the most experienced social investors, social entrepreneurs, foundations, and top academics to assess the cur- rent state of social innovation? The Global Agenda Council on Social Innovation conducted this very experiment, which was

Ann-Kristin Achleitner, Andreas Heinecke, Abigail Noble, Mirjam Schöning, and Wolfgang Spiess-Knafl Unlocking the Mystery An Introduction to Social Investment The field of social entrepreneurship has changed significantly over the past decade. Traditional sources of funding, such as charitable donations, foundation grants, and government subsidies, are not keeping pace with the innovations social entre- preneurs are creating to address the world’s most intractable problems. As social

Ross Baird Seed-Stage Investment and Support Closing the Gap to Growth in Impact Investing In 2009, Jen Medbery was a techie-turned-teacher with an idea to revolution- ize American education, but she couldn’t find funding to grow the company. After graduating from Columbia with a degree in computer science and work- ing in the trenches as a classroom teacher—first through Teach For America, then as a

Amit Bouri How Standards Emerge The Role of Investor Leadership in Realizing the Potential of IRIS The primary users of general purpose financial reporting are present and potential investors, lenders and other creditors, who use that information to make decisions about buying, selling or holding equity or debt instru- ments and providing or settling loans or other forms of credit. The primary users need information

Jaime Ramirez Economic Empowerment through Enterprise Innovations Case Narrative: Gone Rural In Swaziland, one of the most desperately impoverished nations in Africa, a small grass-weaving company has emerged as a ray of hope for the women it works with. This alone would be a worthwhile endeavor, but what is even more fascinating is that this company has the potential to become a model for demonstrating

Pradeep Pursnani Shell Foundation and the Breathing Space Programme Innovations Case Commentary: Envirofit International When Shell Foundation was established in 2000, we had the ambitious objective of catalyzing scalable and sustainable solutions to key global development challenges. We set about doing this in ways that were new at the time: by pioneering an enter- prise-based approach, and by focusing on a range of social and

Tim Bauer Enabling Market-Driven Technology Innovations Case Narrative: Envirofit International Envirofit International is a social enterprise that combines world-class engineer- En g, product development, and commercial expertise to create products that ben- efit the health, ambiente, and economy of some of the world’s poorest people by reducing pollution and energy dependency. Established in 2003 as a nonprofit, Envirofit has amassed a dedicated and driven team of

Simon Desjardins The Need for a Smarter Funding Ecosystem Innovations Case Commentary: Husk Power Systems Most people don’t realize how difficult a challenge Husk Power is tackling today. The geographies in which the company operates are physically harsh and suffer from severe skilled labor shortages. Their technology platform and business model are new and require large teams to implement. Execution of the scale-up plan requires

Manoj Sinha Seeking an End to Energy Starvation Innovations Case Narrative: Husk Power Systems Husk Power Systems (HPS) provides end-to-end renewable energy solutions in India by installing and operating 25-kW to 100-kW “mini power plants,” and then wiring villages and hamlets of up to 4,000 inhabitants to deliver electricity on a pay-for-use basis. HPS has created a proprietary technology that cost-effectively converts biomass waste (p.ej.,

Christine Eibs Singer Impact Investing in Energy Enterprises: A Three-Act Play Innovations Case Narrative: E+Co In 1994, E+Co (pronounced “E and Co”) was formed to pioneer a differ- ent approach to the global energy problem. —Baron and Weinmann1 My colleagues and I became involved in impact investing in the early 1990s, first as an activity of the Rockefeller Foundation, eventually continuing this work through the

Brian Trelstad and Robert Katz Mission, Margin, Mandate: Multiple Paths to Scale Yellowstone National Park, the first of its kind in the world, was established in 1872 by an act of the U.S. Congreso. Its 2.2 million acres have been protected ever since, stewarded by the U.S. National Park Service for the collective benefit of America’s citizens and visitors from around the world. En 2010,

Kris M. Balderston Investing with Impact Unlocking Value for Business and Society The U.S. Department of State is fostering a new approach to development and diplomacy that relies on the strength of America’s diverse resources. In this vein, the Global Partnership Initiative (GPI), which is located in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of State, is collaborating with private businesses, philanthropies, founda- ciones, universidades, fe

Elizabeth Littlefield Impact Investing: Roots & Branches Foreign aid has grown to become a $200 billion global enterprise,1 and aid fund- ing from traditional donor nations alone has increased more than 63 percent in the past decade.2 In many sectors, the investment has paid off. At a time when the world population is climbing inexorably beyond 7 billion, we are now on track to actually

Wayne Silby Impact Investing: Frontier Stories Many people think I started out as a do-gooder. Not exactly. When I graduated from Wharton, my dreams were focused on independence, including the financial kind. Right out of law school, with my Wharton buddy John Guffey, I started one of the first money funds in the country. Our financial engineering strategies creat- ed the money fund that was