Economic Empowerment

In June, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation announced a new loan fund for small businesses in Battle Creek. The target was $10 million, with the foundation committed to matching each $1 given to the fund with $2. The fund moved another step closer to that final goal with a $75,000 contribution from Consumers Energy, presented in a ceremony on Wednesday.

The Fortune 2018 Change the World list features 57 companies that are doing well by doing good. These businesses are trying to fix big problems and make money while doing it. That’s right, it’s not a list about charity (though many of these companies also have charitable efforts). It’s about how business—one of the most scalable and sustainable engines we know of—is using its resources and expertise to tackle the biggest challenges. In recent years, more companies are taking steps to try to solve large-scale social issues; it’s a trend that’s not likely to slow down.

Key organizations in impact management and standard setting, have joined forces to bring impact investing into mainstream finance.

If mobile money was the first phase in the development of digital finance in Africa, the next phase of digital financial services on the continent will focus on lending, insurance and wealth management

In “Beyond Payments: The Next Generation of Fintech Startups in Sub-Saharan Africa,” the venture capital firm Village Capital, and their reporting partner, PayPal, tip their hat to M-Pesa and mobile money in Africa, but say that there’s a wave of innovation still to come.

Jibu, a business that supports the self-empowerment of low income communities, joins Business Call to Action (BCtA) with a commitment to equip, train and finance 1,000 African entrepreneurs to launch drinking water franchises that will produce two and a half million litres of affordable, safe water every day and serve three million consumers by 2022.

More than 65 million people are outside of the mainstream financial system in the U.S, which means they are relying on high-fee alternatives and are not able to access basic financial needs like savings accounts, credit cards, or even a credit score. The Cities for Financial Empowerment Fund (CFE Fund) announced today a $1 million grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation to double the size of its successful “Bank On” Fellowships, which funds a full-time Bank On coalition leader in a community for two years to focus solely on improving banking access for residents.

This October, Whole Planet Foundation celebrates its global impact on poverty and the partners who further its mission. In 2005, Whole Foods Market® launched Whole Planet Foundation, its non-profit dedicated to global poverty alleviation in communities around the world where the company sources products.

With increasing recognition of the imperative for companies and investors to transform their business models in order to generate sustainable returns while achieving the Paris Agreement and Sustainable Development Goals, there’s greater need for a “transformation blueprint.” Responding to this need, Reporting 3.0 is rolling out the Transformation Journey Program (TJP), based on our Transformation Journey Blueprint, in Workshop Series in Europe and North America. The Workshop Series, which focus on Sustainable Finance, will be hosted by ING in Amsterdam, John Hancock / Manulife in Boston, and McMaster University in Toronto between November 2018 and May 2019.

Through a new project WPF supports in Honduras, we will get to see firsthand if the two-pronged approach of providing both agricultural and financial assistance will have a synergistic, lasting positive effect on the alleviation of poverty.

In today’s highly competitive and polarized environment, any movement or cause needs energetic and effective leaders. This is especially true in the social sector, which is chronically understaffed and undercapitalized. Therefore, truly successful and sustainable leaders need to combine the skills and attributes of both leadership and management. They require a vision as well as the ability to execute it.