Archive for December, 2011

Weekly Microfinance News & Announcements 12/30/11

posted: 2011-12-30 @ 9:09 am EST

The Year in Microfinance

By Elizabeth Rhyne, Financial Access Initative Blog This year the microfinance sector got hit with three whammies. The first was the crisis in Andhra Pradesh, where rapid loan growth….

Small Business Story of the Year: The Rise of Alternative Lending

By Rohit Arora, Small Business Trends Supporting small business was among the top economic stories of the year, and the rise in lending to those growing companies was the most important development in 2011.

Banks still waiting on most Dodd-Frank rules

By Danielle Douglas, Washington Post A year and a half has gone by since the Dodd-Frank financial reform act was signed into law, but barely a quarter of the rules in the legislation have been finalized, though federal regulators are rolling out key components of the bill. …

The philanthrocapitalism debate

By Felix Salmon, Reuters Blogs (blog) Organizations such as GlobalGiving, Kiva, and DonorsChoose have made a great start, but this revolution has a long way to go. And we mean revolution, maybe even a mass extinction of traditional nonprofits that cannot engage their givers….

A Brighter Future — Maybe

By Angus Loten, Wall Street Journal Banks with assets of more than $10 billion approved 10% of total loan requests last month, up from 9.3% in October and 9.2% in September, according to a Biz2Credit analysis of 1000 small-business loan applications. Small-business loan approvals by …

How to Use Retirement Funds to Start a Business

By Laurie Kulikowski, The Street Rolling over a qualified retirement plan is a good way to inject equity into your business without penalty, says Steve Stovall, vice president of business development at Benetrends…

12 Days of Giving

posted: 2011-12-22 @ 10:41 am EST

Support microfinance this holiday season by shopping from a client who has been able to start or grow their business with a microloan! All of these small businesses are clients of ACCION and Opportunity Fund.

On the twelfth day of giving a small business owner sold to me:

TWELVE Fluffy pillows- Mary sells quilt kits and “alphabetables” pillows out of Chicago, Illinois.

ELEVEN Lipsticks applyin’ – Based out of Texas, Joelle sells fashion forward products with natural anti-aging elements.

TEN Chocolate treats – Handmade in San Francisco, Kika offers chocolate-covered caramelized cookies, tropical shortbreads and Brazilian honey cakes.

NINE Oils and vinegars – Jeff and Tabatha import the finest and freshest extra virgin olive oils and aged balsamic vinegars to their tasting bar and retail store in Austin, Texas.

EIGHT Cups-a-brewing – Based in Chicago, Alberto imports fair trade, award-winning coffee from Guatemala.

SEVEN Darling bags – Based in San Francisco, Jen provides organic, environmentally-friendly handbags and gorgeous dry-cleaning garment bags.

SIX Salsas roasting – Based out of Albuquerque, New Mexico, the Cervantes family handcrafts this salsa in small batches.

FIVE Golden earrings – Based out of New York city, Alicia designs and crafts beautiful jewelry, inspired by her African and Jewish heritage.

FOUR Golfing clubs – Founded in 1995, Golf Circuit sells golf apparel, equipment and accessories.

THREE Bars of soap – Juwon & Aaron started their Life-Soap business in Denver, Colorado. They give 90% of their after-tax profits to bring clean water to children and communities around the world.

TWO Hand-sewn clutches – Amy’s purse business is based out of New York, New York. All of Amy’s handbags are designed by Amy and hand-sewn.

ONE Cup of delicious green teaOut of San Diego, California, Maria sells delicate yet versatile and unique tea that is sure to lead to a sensory experience!

To support more small businesses, check out ACCION’s Microfinance Holiday Marketplace

Weekly Microfinance News & Announcements 12/16/11

posted: 2011-12-16 @ 2:35 pm EST

Small business loan demand shows new economic gain

By Lynn Adler, Reuters Small businesses re-engineered themselves during the recession and are now more confident and profitable, with lower-risk loan …

Indian Microfinance Crisis – One year later

By Microfinance Focus The only microfinance practitioner on the panel, Suresh Krishna, Managing Director of Grameen Koota concluded the discussion. “IFMR and MicroSave have done a good job post AP crisis. One message I take from here from both MicroSave and IFMR is that …

Big Ideas for Small Business

By Ed Paisley & Sean Pool, Center For American Progress High-growth startup companies are one of the most important drivers of job creation in the economy today. They are also vital to tackling some of our most pressing long-term societal challenges such as improving our health care, education, and energy systems…

Wise Ethical Investment Seeks Profit

By Geoff Nairn, Wall Street Journal The microfinance industry has evolved considerably since the 1970s, when Grameen Bank pioneered microloans in Bangladesh. Today, there are more than 3000 microfinance institutions serving more than 150 million customers in over 100 countries. …

Uptown Microlenders Help Immigrant Women Launch Businesses

By Yumna Mohamed, The Uptowner Among other microlenders operating uptown is ACCION USA which, since its establishment in the US more than 20 years ago has provided 18000microloans with a …

Crowd-Sourced Giving Changes Philanthropy

Hosted by Neal Conan, NPR Websites like Kickstarter, Kiva and Giving Tree are changing how people donate money. With what’s known as microphilanthropy, individuals, non-profits and even small businesses raise money directly from individual donors. Journalist and author Laura …

Fed Seeks to Protect Even a Small Bank

by Daniel Indiviglio and Wayne Arnold, New York Times The central bank spent nearly two years scrutinizing the takeover of the tiny Bonneville Bank by the prepaid debit card firm Green Dot. The soundness of even niche banks matters. But in the too-big-to-fail era, the watchdog’s slow process is an …

Google joins with Seattle angels to bankroll non-profit education microloan upstart Vittana

by John Cook, GeekWire Vittana, the Seattle non-profit that’s facilitating micro-loans to students in developing countries, has received a $250000 grant from Google. Others backing the organization include entrepreneurs Hadi and Ali Partovi; former Microsoft VP Mike Murray; …

Weekly Microfinance News & Announcements 12/9/11

posted: 2011-12-09 @ 2:09 pm EST

Occupy Big Business: The Sharing Economy’s Quiet Revolution

By Sara Horowitz, The Atlantic These and other “collective consumption” companies are part of the new economy arising out of necessity, as traditional businesses and government are increasingly unable to meet Americans’ needs and provide basic supports.

The MicroPlace Ambition: Unleashing $35 Billion in Financial Services Funding …

By Rahim Kanani, Forbes In an interview with Ashwini Narayanan, General Manager of MicroPlace, we discussed the origin and evolution of the company, the nature of social impact investing and microfinance, organizational milestones of recent past, and how to convince the average investor of the enormous potential of impact investing…

Chicago putting $1 million into microloans to spur small businesses

by John Byrne, Chicago Tribune He got the funds from Accion Chicago, a nonprofit that grants small loans to people who don’t qualify to get them from banks. “Without that, we wouldn’t …

Why Start-Ups Need ‘Crowd-Funding’

by Tom Szaky, New York Times (blog) It has been used, variously, to raise seed financing for socially responsible start-ups (Launcht), to supply microcredit in the developing world (Kiva), to collect donations (Karma411), to collect campaign contributions (the 2008 Obama campaign) and to …

Global Microcredit Summit 2011 Report

by Microfinance Focus Insisting that his work with social business is not a move away from microcredit, but that microcredit is in fact a social business, he argued for business-oriented solutions to social problems, drawing on many experiences as MD of Grameen Bank. …

Supporting Small Business in a Big Way

by Erin Eggers, San Antonio Express As 2011 comes to a close, the founder of San Antonio-based Acción Texas has much to celebrate about the past year. Janie Barrera and the organization she …

Weekly Microfinance News & Announcements 12/2/2011

posted: 2011-12-02 @ 3:18 pm EST

Beyond micro-credit: an evolving microfinance | Engenderings

by Engenderings, The London School of Economics and Political Science Joanna Wilkins, drawing on her research and her experience working in microfinance for BRAC, argues that we need to reconceptualise microfinance and its priorities and to increase and extend access to financial tools to those previously …. The consequences of creating a pseudo, or shadow banking system, not dissimilar to that of the red-lining and predatory lending seen in the Dustbelt of the United States, could result in the marginalization of those microcredit was created for in …

MICROFINANCE PAPER WRAP-UP: “Too Much Microcredit? A Survey of the Evidence on …

by MicroCapital, Review of Paper Written by Jessica Schicks and Richard Rosenberg The authors of this paper discuss over-indebtedness from the perspective of microborrowers and examine related issues including evidence of its prevalence, causes and consequences…

Statistics on the Unbanked

NerdWallet The un- and underbanked do not represent a cross-section of society as a whole. On the contrary, they’re far more likely to be minorities, low-income, and less …

Banks may have opportunity with under-served market

By Chris Sieroty, Las Vegas Review – Journal The survey also reported that Internet-based payday lending grew by 35 percent between 2009 and 2010, while the general purpose prepaid card business grew by 33 percent and payroll cards by 25 percent. Schutte, whose venture capital firm invests in …

Walmart “Bank” Cannot Beat Big Banks

By Simon Zhen, MyBankTracker.com But, a small part of that group may have opted to join the underbanked population by conducting their finances through major retailers such as Walmart. Walmart offers a host of financial services that would make it a formidable competitor to banks, …

Banking the Unbanked, Looking for Company

by Maria Aspan, American Banker Traditional bankers have been generally uninterested in courting people who do not have or regularly use bank accounts: Because these customers generally do not have much money, the thinking goes, they are unlikely to be very profitable.