SMS Microlending will combine the life-changing potential of microloans with the convenience of SMS fundraising and the addictive fun of online social gaming.  Websites like Kiva.org have already demonstrated the efficacy of online microlending.  As of November 6^th, 2009, Kiva has lent $100 million to 250K entrepreneurs through 587K lenders.  In addition, the outpouring of charitable contributions to combat the devastation in Haiti has demonstrated that SMS donations can raise significant capital. The Red Cross alone has collected over $8 million in the span of just two days through $10 SMS donations.

Combining these two concepts is a natural step in the evolution of online and mobile social entrepreneurship.  However, we aim to take the idea in a radically different direction by adding the entertainment and incentives of social gaming.  By themselves, the top five social games on Facebook.com net over 50 million active users per month. Capturing just a tiny fraction of the Internet’s social game market would be sufficient to support this endeavor.

Add the power of college competition and the sky is the limit! Imagine two rival universities, pitted against each other in a race of goodwill as school pride fuels a battle of fundraising. Who can send the most texts or get the highest scores to raise capital for budding entrepreneurs?

While we believe that people are intrinsically charitable and kind, appealing to their desire for entertainment and socialization adds a significant incentive to the purely altruistic. 

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Africa Start-Up provides business training to microfinance recipients in Malawi, Africa to provide permanent solutions to extreme poverty and unemployment.  Its goal is to supply the know-how to create sustaining businesses, double personal incomes, and increase collaborative trust, transparency and accountability for entrepreneurs living in the sixth poorest country in the world.  With a social entrepreneurship framework, Africa Start-Up is building a coalition of students, professors, business professionals, non-profit experts and government stakeholders around the world to address the issue of high unemployment (over 85% nationwide) and extreme poverty in Malawi.   Africa Start-Up is inspired by study and application of Seattle University economics/marketing student, Christina Davis, after working with microloan recipients and initiated a business training pilot program in Malawi in 2009. 

 

She learned Malawian entrepreneurs will travel nearly half-a-day to learn how to grow small business expansion.  Success means survival.   Africa Start-Up fills the gap by providing both financial stimulus and educational support.  University of Malawi business school students will teach bi-weekly classes; Seattle University’s Students-In-Free-Enterprise (SIFE) and Beta Alpha Psi chapters will consult with microenterprise owners live during classroom webinars.  Upon completion, students will earn a $100+ loan through a local microfinance institution and join a broad social network of business owners.   This program will supply models for similar efforts throughout Africa.  

 

Start-Up solutions, Start-Up success…Africa Start-Up!
 

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In the developed world individuals and entrepreneurs have been able to take advantage of the internet to expand their reach to customers through new products and services.  In the developing world fewer individuals have access to the internet and entrepreneurs have been limited in their scope and reach.  However, where the internet is failing to make in-roads, mobile phones are taking off; now reaching nearly 4.6 billion phones globally. 

Bazari will provide individuals and entrepreneurs in developing countries (initially India) the advantages of eCommerce through a text-message based platform.  Through the platform customers can browse, purchase, pay, and arrange delivery for products; similar to shopping on eBay or Amazon, but all done via text messaging.

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Do you know anyone who could part with $25 dollars for a few months for a good cause?  How would that person feel about putting that $25 together with lots of other $25 to fund zero-interest loans to low income Americans?  Not just any low-income Americans, but people they have something in common with, like fellow employees of the same organization or company, living in the same town, being a member of the same religious or cultural group.  Our research shows that many people would like to do this of the possibility existed.  On the other side, these zero-interest loans could provide much-needed relief and assistance with essential costs such as education or utility bills or unexpected costs such as healthcare and hospital bills.  LendForGood will be a web-based service facilitating zero-interest peer-to-peer lending and borrowing for low-income Americans allowing people who care and can help a little to come together - via our website - to have a meaningful and lasting impact in an efficient, transparent and targeted way on those who need a helping hand, but want to give back what they get from others. We intend to use the power of the web help people use their spare cash to impact the lives of needy people on their doorstep. lfgdell510.0

Energy upgrades such as programmable thermostats, and energy efficient refrigerators can save people a considerable amount of money on their energy bills.  However, lower-income families, who already spend a disproportionate amount of their income on energy, are often unable to afford the initial investment for these energy upgrades.   At the same time,  these families often suffer from poor or non-existing credit scores,  locking them out of the American financial system. That’s why we’ve created the DoubleGreen credit builder loan – a small loan that will finance the purchase and installation of these and other energy and money-saving upgrades.  In this way residents will be able to affordably lower their energy expenditures and carbon emissions.

Additionally, as they make the low monthly repayments on the loan,  residents will receive the added benefit of building their credit score, which will provide them with greater access to capital and other financial opportunities.  Borrowers also receive training on how to budget, build credit, use bank accounts, and reduce energy costs in other ways.  In this way, the DoubleGreen loan promotes financial stability and upward social mobility.  Lastly, the DoubleGreen loan creates much-needed jobs for the contractors that will install the thermostats, energy-star refrigerators, etc.

It can be difficult for average Americans to find meaningful ways of being eco-friendly. But it doesn’t have to be. Not with the DoubleGreen credit builder loan. The first of its kind in the country, the DoubleGreen loan allows residents to be green and save green at the same time. peacefulloflove70.0

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Although microfinance is playing an important role in global poverty alleviation there are several major criticisms and challenges that microfinance needs to overcome: attain financial sustainability, lower interest rates and lend to the poorer and more marginalized. Furthermore, with only a fraction of potential microfinance customers served globally, there is still a huge demand for credit for those not served by traditional banking institutions, particularly the very poor and especially youth. By combining microfinance with responsible tourism this venture offers sustainable 0% interest microcredit loans whilst offering a unique tourist and cultural educational exchange to travel to lesser known areas, meet with microentrepreneurs, learn about their businesses and ultimately leave the visited community better off. Our model focuses on the quality of loans and mentor capital to enhance income rather than quantity of loans. Therefore, we are able to target the more neglected segments of the unbanked market such as youth, who are currently underserved but have high potential for innovative projects with enough mentor capital from our staff. ElenaLainVale50.0

A new credit card company that gives you charity reward money instead of normal rewards points. When you sign up for this credit card company you can either receive a generic “Green” card, so that when people see your card they know you donate your reward points to charity, or you can choose a specific charity to have your reward points donated to, and that charity’s name and picture will be on that card, so that when you pull out the card people will know you donate all your rewards to that charity. We think people will go for these types of credit cards because they want to impress other people with their charitable giving.

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Every year thousands of people leave their homes and families with the dream of improving their lives and the lives of their beloved... our idea is to help them to achieve part of their dream by providing them with financing to invest in an asset that will substantially improve their lives.

 

Part of the American dream is to own a house and it is exactly the same in other parts of the world, so our idea is to develop a system of cross-border mortgages. For example, there is a Mexican immigrant in the US. His family stayed in Mexico. Currently, if they want to get a mortgage for a house in Mexico, they can’t because the income is generated abroad. We propose to issue a loan in Mexico, in Mexican pesos, backed by the house and repaid with the funds that the immigrant generates in the US. Additionally, if some family members are able to generate further income in Mexico, we could incorporate this effect in the risk profile and in the pricing.

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Of Rags is a fair trade fashion cooperative that combines elements of New York style and the hippest Ghanaian fashions into unique, handmade artful clothing. Established in September 2009, Of Rags is the vision of J. Branson, an NYU student and social entrepreneur who studied at NYU’s Ghana Program during the Fall of 2009, and RAAM, a Ghanaian designer in Accra, the capital. They have quickly grown their business into a full clothing line available for sale in Ghana, in New York  and online at www.ofrags.com. The company has plans to employ additional seamstresses at fair trade wages, and eventually to work with new design partners, first in Ghana and then around the globe in a cooperative structure selling through retailers, Of Rags’ own stores, and online. An injection of capital will allow us to proceed with the Of Rags business plan.

The business plan also calls for donating 40 percent of the profits to The Of Rags Foundation, which will be run by Neha Dubli, who is also an NYU student. The Foundation initially has partnered with one of the few special education centers in Accra, Ghana to establish a much-needed scholarship program. In addition, The Foundation will coordinate with the West Africa AIDS Foundation to help fund the organization’s pioneering peer education program.  Of Rags also aims to sponsor and coordinate a series of symposiums on fair trade, corporate citizenship and community empowerment targeted at youth in both New York City and Accra.   ofrags400.0

Imagine lighting your home with a single kerosene lantern or cooking dinner on a campfire in your kitchen. Amazingly, over half the people in the world do not have access to safe and affordable products to meet their basic needs for these simple tasks. As a result, billions of people suffer from preventable illnesses and deplorable living conditions. However, there are hundreds of affordable products that can safely meet people's daily needs while saving them money and conserving the environment. If these products exist then why aren’t billions of people using them? Today there are no effective distribution channels to connect billions of people in developing countries to healthy and cost saving products.

To meet this enormous market opportunity PowerMundo has built a wholesale distribution service to deliver healthy and cost saving products to millions of customers. PowerMundo coordinates a network of product designers, suppliers, and retailers to deliver clean technology. Additionally we partner with microfinance loan officers who advertise the products and provide credit for purchases. Additional partnerships with micro franchise developers enable entrepreneurs to access business training and micro loans to become independent sales agents. Currently, PowerMundo is selling products in Peru. Ultimately PowerMundo’s sustainable business will improve people’s lives, create employment opportunities, and conserve natural resources.  powermundo70.0

Our Background:

Beyond the Campus was born from the success of an entrepreneurial venture by Georgetown University senior Matt Duffy.  After a close family friend passed away from cancer, Matt decided to do something to help stop the disease.  He and some friends drew upon their initiative and started Beyond the Hilltop Tours to give students a taste of life outside the college-bubble, and donated all of the money to cancer treatment.  Their success gave the young entrepreneurs an idea.  If they could start a socially conscious business, why not help others to do the same?

Our Model:

Beyond the Campus (BtC) seeks to create similar organizations on college campuses across the country.  The organization would have two parts, an entrepreneurial business to generate revenue, and a service focused project to help people in need.  BtC would first help young entrepreneurs start a sustainable business, for example a walking tour company styled “Beyond the Campus Tours.” From that business, 70% of the profit will go directly to a social project, while 30% goes to help start up new entrepreneurial ventures.  Projects might consist of tutoring at-risk youth, repairing deteriorating houses, whatever the local community needs.

The benefits to this are that the commitment to a cause is shared by both non-profit and for-profit sides of the organization; important skills such as marketing are shared across the organization; and, as this investment in student entrepreneurship becomes profitable, the new businesses themselves begin contributing, and there’s an exponential increase in the good we can do!

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HaBank HaYarok – The Green Bank, is a green microfinance initiative designed as a social business. Green microfinance may be defined as either no or low interest no collateral microloans destined to provide the necessary capital to help the impoverished start or expand green micro-businesses, live more sustainably, and build Israel’s new “green economy”. These loans will be accompanied by educational and technical assistance in the fields of sustainability and financial literacy.  Potential green micro-businesses include but are not limited to: recycling businesses, organic food production, bicycle delivery services, small and large scale waste composting, furniture construction from recycled wood, green building, manufacturing jobs related to large-scale production of green technologies, non-toxic cleaning in residential and commercial buildings, solar panel installation, and water and energy retrofits to increase efficiency.

At HaBank HaYarok, a borrower may fit into one of four categories.  The first category is devoted to Israel’s homeless; the second to Green Collar entrepreneurs seeking to launch green micro-business; the third to small green businesses that wish to expand; and the fourth to small businesses/homeowners who cannot cover the upfront costs of water and energy retrofits and renewable energy upgrades. The hope is that the borrowers will advance through the program and that there will be business interaction and cooperation between the different categories of borrowers. HaBank HaYarok’s pilot project will take place in Israel, but its founder has every intention to bring its working model to other countries and cultivate a worldwide green microfinance initiative.

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Every year, organizations lose almost $92 billion dollars in fundraising overhead, almost a third of every donation. Because fundraising is so expensive, fundraisers are forced to focus only on the top 10% of donors for 90% of the donations. Organizations want to fundraise better, but they don’t have the time, the money, or the tools to do so.

Speramus is an online fundraising platform that will revolutionize the way these organizations fundraise, using our proprietary HopeRank system to match individual donors with personalized support opportunities. Our unique fundraising approach breaks down an organization’s work into small, clearly budgeted projects that interact with donors on a personal level.  Relevant donors are then automatically identified through the HopeRank system, a proprietary targeting algorithm developed in conjunction with Decision Science experts at Carnegie Mellon University. HopeRank considers several factors, including the donor’s interests, giving history, and current context to create a portfolio of support opportunities uniquely tailored to the individual donor’s personality.

Unlike all competitors, Speramus’ HopeRank system allows organizations to target donors with a level of granularity never before possible at a cost lower than ever before dreamed. Our combination of small projects automatically matched with individual donors through extensive data analysis allows organizations to fundraise more effectively than any other approach, with Speramus donors giving 60% more than those solicited using traditional techniques. The Speramus fundraising platform uniquely allows organizations to improve the level of service and interaction offered to donors while simultaneously reducing the overall cost of fundraising.

 

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 Our idea is to build net zero energy second dwelling units that use new super insulated panels.  This will decrease per-capita energy consumption throughout growing cities.  We will use a manufacturing process derived from what was originally a refrigeration technology.   We worked with leading scientists in the Berkeley Labs and a manufacturer from the venture-backed Zeta Communities to develop this application.  We intend to build two homes on sites that we have identified in Austin, TX and Berkeley, CA at the behest of clients that own the properties.  Once complete, we will then track the energy consumption of the new homes and prove that we can provide the most sustainable solution for urban growth. 

 

We will partner with New Avenue Inc. to implement and scale this solution.   New Avenue (www.newavenuehomes.com) is a business offering a solution for housing in America.   It has an infill development model that allows builders and homeowners to work together to build small, net zero energy homes inside growing cities.   New Avenue projects that residential backyards within our cities and suburbs can accommodate the next 40 years of population growth.  Our project is to design and install small, attractive super insulated homes to fill two of these parcels.   Our designs coupled with the New Avenue model for growth will create a financially, environmentally and socially sustainable alternative to traditional building.    Through financial partnering, community building and energy efficiency, we will create a new way to enjoy the security of affordable and eco-friendly homes.

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More than 10, 000 science-based research projects are carried out by postgraduate and undergraduate researchers yearly, yet no formal marketplace exists for selling the results and inventions evolving from these research works to prospective investors for capital injection. The nonexistence of a formal marketplace has precipitated an economic environment which has sent many technological innovations from their ‘embryonic stages’ to their untimely ‘economic graves’.

Additionally, neither the government nor any of the tertiary institutions in Nigeria has an open Fund to help deserving researchers cover the high costs associated with prototyping and patenting ideas in Nigeria- two important steps involved in creating investment-ready companies. Stakeholders in Nigeria seem to be either ignoring or overlooking an emerging reality; that today’s technologies give rise to tomorrow’s jobs.

The Dream Believers plan to create a marketplace called the Ideas Market Square for early stage technology companies evolving from the brilliant research projects of researchers in Nigeria. Each ‘seller’ (i.e. researcher or  inventor) will be given a shop in IdeasMarketSquare to showcase his inventions to ‘buyers’ (Angel Investors, Venture Capitalists) who will visit the market on specific days of the year designated as Invention Market Days.

Furthermore, our advocacy mechanism will sensitize the National Assembly and other stakeholders in Nigeria on the need to pass a Technology Commercialization Catalysis bill which will empower the government to provide up to N5billion funds annually to enable 400-500 undergraduate and postgraduate researchers cover the costs associated with creating prototypes and patenting ideas.

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WV is a new, scalable financial model that leverages economic investment to create world class solutions by adapting innovative technology to solve the most pressing humanitarian challenges. This is done by investing equity capital in exchange for the exclusive license to propriety products and/or service to be used noncompetitively to achieve social change.  

WV uses an innovative integration of several investment vehicles, particularly Venture Capital (VC), Private Equity (PE) and search to create a new type of investment fund geared toward social development. The best elements of each will be used to create a new model for investment to achieve greater social gains, while simultaneously realizing bottom line profits.

WV will capitalize on the changing funding landscape of angel investors and VC’s where the latter is unable to exit from their current portfolio due to the lack of IPO’s. In addition, there is more attention towards social investment but, thus far, no way exists to scale microfinance into the mainstream finance landscape.Investment in the target companies will mostly be structured as a “typical” VC firm, with the exception that WV will not take a controlling share in the business, but rather expect the technology license for the application to solve social problems.





WV will take some leadership on the board of the target company, but will not be involved in daily affairs. Furthermore, equity investment will not begin until a potential social problem has been identified where the technology could be applied.  

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The Microfinance University is our vision of a place where passionate students and young professionals are educated about and trained for thoughtful, productive careers in microfinance. Similar to a real university, we plan to build a virtual space for discussion, learning, collaboration, innovation, and career services. 

This vision is born of our success in creating an online social network called MFI Connect (www.mficonnect.com). MFI Connect provides access to existing microfinance education courses, innovative fundraising campaigns, in-field exposure programs, ground-breaking discussion, and competitive job opportunities. Our growing member base of over eight-hundred individuals located around the world includes students from over fifty universities, microfinance professionals, and avid microfinance supporters. 

While MFI Connect provides a valuable information resource, a platform for discussion, and links to a number of active initiatives, there is need for a more pro-active organization that would meet the increasing demand for trained microfinance professionals. We believe that establishing The Microfinance University would support poverty alleviation through increasing the ability, productivity, and creativity of entering microfinance practitioners. The Microfinance University40.0

What:

• A multi-level franchise-based business model to provide basic energy to the base of the economic pyramid

Why:

• 1.6 billion people without electricity and 2.4 billion people cooking with dirty, dangerous fuels

How:

• Combining volume purchase capability with quality control, installment purchase, remote revenue collection and carbon monetization.
• By empowering local entrepreneurs and enterprises with product selection and competitive pricing

BEBOP is a private sector solution to more effectively distribute modern off-grid energy technologies, such as efficient cooking stoves, solar lanterns and solar home systems, tailored to the needs of rural, poor consumers.

Because the market for off-grid energy technologies already exists, BEBOP will directly address the 3 main barriers that stand in their way. These are:

• Companies in the market are small and cannot take advantage of economies of scale, leading to higher fixed costs
• Lack of access to finance for entrepreneurs and consumers
• Poor enforcement and knowledge on the quality of energy technologies

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