If You Ain’t First, You’re Last
First of all, although this is a blog about my internship at a microfinance foundation, I may title some of my posts with quotes from Will Ferrell movies. I’m sorry/you’re welcome.
The Grameen Foundation is currently part of a competition sponsored by American Express. Forty eight charities, divided into five categories by type, are competing for funding. Anyone can sign on to the site and vote once a week for the duration of this round (until August 22nd). At the end of the round, the winning charity from each category wins $200,000.
Click here to vote. You can vote once a week, and if you have a Facebook account you can use your username and password to log in, otherwise you can go through a quick sign up process.
Some examples of how the Grameen Foundation would use unrestricted funding, like the winnings from this competition, are:
- To leverage and lend to microfinance instutions. For example: $200,000 leveraged at 2x would become $400,000 worth of funding for a microfinance institution, which in turn could be used to create thousands of loans, and increase the institution’s financial sustainability and outreach.
-Funds could go towards Grameen’s non-financial innovations such as the development and implementation of Mifos, an open source microfinance information management system that enables microfinance institutions to increase their efficiency and facilitates the measurement of their social and business impact.
Also, you should vote because the idea of charities competing against each other is at least somewhat comical.
July 6th, 2010 at 12:26 pm
Dear Remy,
You are immersing yourself in an interesting field and its good to see idealism continues to knock around inside you, even if you are not quite sure what to do with it. As an economist, one tends to be skeptical – where is the market failure? and also to wonder about opportunity costs – could these funds have greater impact if used in a different way? They are legitimate questions. Can they be answered, yet? There continues to be debate. But there is not doubt that the stories are compelling. For the part of the sector that is well run and sustainable, even profitable, it seems the opportunity cost is quite low.
I have just joined the faculty in the economics department and have some strong interest in microfinance. Please look me up when you return and we can talk about your experience with Grameen and how you might want to add to it, whether personally and for your own goals, or more broadly on campus if that idealism takes root.
Regards,
Shannon Mudd
July 8th, 2010 at 3:54 pm
Dear Professor Mudd,
Thanks very much for your comment. Your questions are to the point and interestingly address a project that I am currently working on for Grameen. I’m about to put up another post discussing a recently published article that addresses the effects of microfinance.
As I learn about microfinance, the unknowns in the field jump out at me. If I was a full blown idealist, I may have had my bubble burst.
I look forward to discussing the field and my experiences with you in person when I return to campus. Welcome to Haverford.
Regards,
Remy Olson
July 28th, 2010 at 10:42 am
Hey Remy,
What kind of equity does Grameen have to absorb losses if they were to leverage up their winnings?
Best,
Will