conference

Toilet talk may be taboo in most professional situations, but at World Water Week, toilets were a hot topic.

For those unfamiliar with World Water Week, it is an annual meeting of water experts, practitioners and leaders from around the globe to discuss the world’s most urgent water issues. This year’s meeting was held August 16-21 in Stockholm, and ideas were exchanged on many water-related topics, ranging from water management practices to sustainable business models to research on health impacts to policy.  (For those interested, presentations from the event can be downloaded for free here).

This year saw a number of sessions focused on sanitation (a.k.a. toilets). The raw statistics around sanitation are shocking: 2.4 billion people (more than 1/3 of the world’s population) lack access to adequate toilet facilities. One in five children dies of diarrheal diseases, and 88% of diarrhea cases are caused by either unsafe drinking water, inadequate sanitation or poor hygiene.

Sanitation challenges are intimately linked with the lack of infrastructure investments in rural areas and informal settlements and slums, but solutions are emerging that can be applied by individuals and communities without a need to rely on large-scale centralized investments. It was encouraging to see entrepreneurs developing models for improving access to safe, hygienic toilets that can be distributed widely at affordable prices.

Dr. Brindeshwar Pathak, a sanitation innovator who founded the Sulabh Sanitation Movement, was the most prominent example: he was awarded the 2009 Stockholm Water Prize for his pioneering work in developing cost-effective toilet solutions and his work to change social attitudes toward unsanitary latrine practices. The scale of Sulabh is truly impressive, and the preservation of human dignity lies at the core of their work.

Another, earlier stage, example that stood out to me was Bapak Sumadi, an entrepreneur in Indonesia, a country where 66 million people practice open defecation. Mr. Sumadi has developed an innovative business strategy around direct sales of latrines: he’s segmented his market and has priced four different levels of products (ranging from $18 - $85); he’s branded each model with a catchy name and designed them to be upgradeable; he offers flexible payment terms and after-sales services (e.g., pit-emptying).  While it remains to be seen whether the model will be able to scale, it is encouraging to see promise in these enterprising, consumer-focused approaches to challenging one of the world’s biggest problems.

The conference was a valuable opportunity to identify business models and make contacts that can help us as we continue to invest in this sector.

Reflections on the Dignity event: After a successful fundraising event on July 30, Michelle Mak of the Young Professionals for Acumen Fund reflects on the experience that raised over $24,000 and brought together a dynamic group of professionals.  Read her posts Part I and Part II.

Acumen Fund and Metrics: Kevin Jones, co-founder of SoCap09 Conference, in the Huffington Post and Nathaniel Whittemore from Change.org in a blog post highlight the panel for the upcoming Social Capital Conference on the  Global Impact Investing Rating System (GIIRS) and Impact Reporting and Investment Standards (IRIS).

Need a good overview of Acumen Fund? Acumen’s Rob Katz gives an interview with Latitude Responsable, a project filming many of the world’s social enterprises, where he discusses Acumen Fund and Acumen investee Global Easy Water Products (GEWP).

This post was originally posted on the Ripple Effect blog by Acumen Fund’s Sangeeta Chowdry - Ripple Effect Project Manager.

Ripple Effect team presenting at the conference

The Ripple Effect team marked the end of the successful India phase of the project by attending and presenting at the recently concluded Water Summit 2009 conference held in New Delhi.

The summit had an excellent turnout with over 150 attendees and speakers representing multiple stakeholders from the water sector in India. These included senior representatives from the Government of India, NGOs, World Economic Forum, UNDP, USAID, SDC, private sector, as well as various State Water Boards and financial institutions.

An introduction to the Ripple Effect project was made by Acumen Fund and IDEO, followed by presentations from four of the organizations running the pilot projects – Jal Bhagirathi Foundation, Naandi Foundation, Piramal Foundation and Water Health India.

All the presentations were very well received by the attendees, who also provided valuable feedback to us. In particular, the technology based work of Piramal and Naandi was complimented by several members of the audience. It was mentioned that while similar ideas had been implemented elsewhere, (eg. by Mother Dairy in India), this approach had not been tested in the water sector until now. One audience member commented that successful projects like they had seen within the Ripple Effect, should be linked to the public sector through policy interventions, in order to reach even greater scale. Yet another, from an international NGO, suggested starting a Ripple Effect like project in sanitation.

Jal Bhagirathi water outlet

During the pilot presentations, Jal Bhagirathi spoke of the successes it had achieved through their public-private-community partnerships model. Their reverse osmosis plant was now selling water to newly established remote water outlets, owned and managed by the community members. The project resulted in improved availability of safe drinking water while providing opportunities for livelihood generation for the women in the village. As a result of this project, the volume of water sold from their reverse osmosis plant, had increased from an average 2000 liters a day to 12,000 liters per day. The location of the outlets had resulted in reducing the distance of access to water from 2 km to under 0.5 km for the community.

Guest blogger Aden Van Noppen is a recent graduate of Brown University, where she earned a degree in International Development. She is also an intern for Acumen Fund, where she works to develop programs that teach college students about private sector solutions to poverty. Aden was formerly an intern for Dalberg Global Development Advisors, where she worked on the development of the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs.

By Aden Van Noppen

“I will develop a social enterprise major on my campus.” “Thousands of incoming freshmen will read the Blue Sweater as their first taste of college.” “We will create a viral video that reaches millions.” “Students will learn about and engage with social enterprise through the online hub we will build.” “We will change the way our generation tackles poverty.”

The seventeen student leaders who took Acumen Fund’s New York office by storm last week committed to accomplishing all these goals and more. Acumen’s inaugural Student Leaders Workshop was meant to ignite the fire under a cohort of young leaders who will return to their campuses in the fall as champions of social enterprise. The workshop and the students exceeded all expectations, and time will tell what they will accomplish together.

History tells us that college students are frequently on the cutting edge of social change. We (as a recent graduate, I still count myself among them) are often unsatisfied with the status quo and have the energy and passion to demand new ways of solving old problems. However, young people today are not protesting or rioting—instead, we are proclaiming ourselves social entrepreneurs and actively searching for the best models to address poverty. The movement for social enterprise is brewing on campuses across the country and the world, and seventeen young global leaders left Acumen Fund’s workshop last weekend inspired and driven to bring it to a new level.

We spent much of the workshop asking ourselves hard questions. What is development? How do we measure poverty alleviation? When can market-based solutions sidestep the barriers of traditional approaches? What is leadership? How do we know when to step forward and when to step back? How do we change the way our generation tackles poverty? There are still more questions than answers, but the participants now look to Acumen as an inspiring model and to each other as a dynamic group of leaders who can continue searching for the answers together.

If the last few days are any indication, their excitement, curiosity, and commitment will continue to grow. Social media tools are buzzing as they stay in touch, collaborate, and strategize. What they accomplish together is still to be seen, but I have no doubt that they will inspire many on their campuses and beyond to question the status quo and embrace a new model of fighting poverty.

In the coming months, the students will demonstrate the power of young people and of building a tribe of individuals who, as Seth Godin told us when he kicked off the workshop, “Decide to say yes.” Two days after leaving, one participant wrote, “The workshop left me with hope and inspiration. I now have a better idea of the field and how it works but most importantly, the workshop gave me the confidence to aspire and dare to dream.” These seventeen leaders will return to their campuses in the fall as extensions of the Acumen Fund team, ready and equipped to support Acumen’s mission to change how the world tackles poverty.

TechnoServe VP for Development Simon Winter speaks at ANDE training. (Photo by Brian Murray)

Last week, along with 40-plus other participants, the Acumen Fund summer associates participated in an energetic and informational training session run by the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE).  ANDE is a member-driven organization whose goal is to dramatically increase the effectiveness of capital and technical assistance for entrepreneurs in developing countries.  This training was a definitive step towards that goal.

For the second year in a row, ANDE has organized this training along with Acumen Fund, Root Capital, Grassroots Business Fund, Endeavor and many other members of ANDE.  With the exploding interest in supporting Small and Growing Businesses (SGBs) as a means of alleviating poverty, the importance of coordinating and connecting those entering the field has never been more critical.  Not only was the training immensely important to developing relationships across organizations; it also provided a forum to share best practices and to promote innovative thinking.

The two-day seminar was packed with a discussion of different business models, presentations on social metrics and hands-on case studies.  As if any of the graduate-level interns needed more motivation heading into the sector, the opportunity to hear from amazing speakers such as Christine Eibs Singer from E+Co, Brian Midler and Namrita Kapur from Root Capital, Susie Lee from IGNIA, Raj Kundra, Sasha Dichter and Ann MacDougall from Acumen Fund, Simon Winter and Jennifer Golden from TechnoServe, Ben Powell and Ricardo Teran from Agora Partnerships was inspirational.

I was uplifted to meet our peers who are now heading into the field to countries such as Pakistan, Kenya, Rwanda, Ghana, Nicaragua and Guatemala. In particular, I was humbled and inspired by their backgrounds, skill sets and demonstrated passion for the work we will be undertaking.   I hope that this foundation of collaboration is something we all push to continue beyond the training amongst ourselves and by including more people interested in the sector.

My personal highlights were:

• Sasha Dichter’s non-profit Venn Diagram
• Learning more about the Global Impact Investing Network and its mission to educate and drive more investors into the sector
• Quote to inspire by Ben Powell of Agora Partnerships:
  Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages. Bitter cold. Long months of complete darkness. Constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success

  ~ Sir Ernest Shackleton’s trans-Antarctic expedition recruitment advertisement

Although not exactly applicable to those of us heading out into the field (safe return = certain), it is a reminder that we all need support, encouragement and community to help us through the hard times when things don’t seem possible and barriers appear impassable.  I’m confident coming out of this training that this community is stronger than ever and I look forward to contributing.

For those of you who were at the training, please feel free to share your highlights in the comments section!

The social enterprise space is alive and well in India.  This is my overarching conclusion having spent all day Tuesday at the inaugural Sankalp Forum, hosted by Intellecap in Mumbai.

Sankalp - which means “pledge” or “determination” in English - focused on the role of business in driving social change.  When I arrived on Tuesday morning, the main plenary hall was packed with attendees from across the social sector - entrepreneurs, investors, business executives, media, think-tanks, non-profits and students.  It was heartening to see such a diverse crowd.

The first plenary panel was among the best of the day.  It featured three investors, a journalist and a consultant.  I’m sure there’s a joke somewhere that begins with such a cast of characters!  Vineet Rai, of Aavishkaar - a BoP investment fund - suggested that C.K. Prahalad’s 2004 arguments have evolved, and that selling shampoo isn’t social enterprise.  (You won’t find much disagreement here.)

Unlike other Prahalad critics, however, Rai offered his “Four S’s of Social Enterprise” in retort: Social, Small, Sustainable, Scale.  Whether he intended it to or not, this 4-S framework persisted throughout the day - especially in the investment panels.

Investment panels?  Sankalp was not a typical conference - it was also a social enterprise investment forum.  The event was home to the final round of judging, identifying 15 high-impact enterprises serving social ends through market-based means from a field of 300 nominees.  Some of the interesting enterprises I saw at Sankalp include - in no particular order:

Ziqitza Education: (Editor’s note: Updated the link; this is direct to the right site. Thanks Abhishek for pointing that out!) Also known as “Education Access for All”, Ziqitza Education is a young social enterprise operating private schools and e-learning tools in Rajasthan, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.  Can there be chain private schools?  In India, where the demand for good private education is universal, the answer is probably yes.  (Parents of all but the poorest kids are willing to pay school fees, research shows.  Education spending is the first priority after food and shelter…)  If you are looking for a new company to keep your eye on, Ziqitza Education might be a good place to start.

Vaatsalya Healthcare: Vaatsalya won the Sankalp High Growth Award in the Healthcare category.  It’s a corporate hospital operating in semi-urban and rural areas - a first for India.  With a strong presence in Karnataka and coming expansion to Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, Vaatsalya is another company worth tracking.

Gramin Suvidha Kendra: This is a partnership between the Multi Commodities Exchange and India Post to use postmen - ubiquitous across India - to bring price information to rural farmers.  It’s allowing farmers to access futures contracts for the first time, which allows for cash flow smoothing.  For all the talk of microfinance, the kind of work GSK is doing is really the bricks and mortar of a functioning agricultural supply chain - which could do more to alleviate poverty than many of these other, more complex, companies.

D.Light Design: A social enterprise that sells solar-powered LED lights in East Africa and India, D.Light works to eradicate kerosene lamps from the world.  These lamps are inefficient, costly and terrible for your health.  A D.Light lamp - they have a range of brands - gets at all three of these problems.  (Full disclosure: Acumen Fund is an investor in D.Light.)

There were dozens of entrepreneurs at the event, all of them with inspiring business plans in various stages of development and implementation.  I hope the investors present left with pockets full of business cards and plenty of new ideas about the viability of the social sector here in India. I was also thrilled to see my colleague Vikram Raman on stage to present the awards for healthcare. Vikram was the lead judge in that vertical at Sankalp, a real testimony to his deep knowledge of the social enterprise space and of healthcare in particular.

In many ways, Sankalp reminded me of the 2004 Eradicating Poverty Through Profit conference, which was arguably the first significant event ever to focus exclusively on the intersection between development and enterprise.  (I should know - I helped plan the 2004 event as a World Resources Institute employee.)  As in 2004, there was a palpable buzz among participants Tuesday - that finally, there was critical mass around the idea of using business to do good.  As in 2004, however, there were also too many panels and not enough networking time.  And there was a nagging feeling that it might be a little inappropriate to run a conference about alleviating poverty and environmental problems in a 5-star hotel with the air conditioning set at a chilly 68 degrees Farenheit.  You heard the same criticisms of the 2004 event, held at a high-rise San Francisco hotel.

I should restrain my criticism, however - Sankalp was a great event.  Personally, I was glad to see colleagues from India, Asia and as far away as the United States during the tea breaks.  Despite all the talk of recession - or perhaps because of it - the social enterprise space is alive and well. 

Yet there is much to do.  Antony Bugg-Levine, of the Rockefeller Foundation, suggested in the closing plenary that we must be afraid of the hype.  Social enterprise might be alive and well, but it has not arrived, at least not yet.  Let’s remember that it took 30 years - and substantial subsidy - to get the microfinance sector fully developed.  Impact investing - and BoP business strategy - can be done quicker and better by learning from microfinance, but it won’t be an overnight change.

Arriving bleary-eyed after an overnight flight from New York, I showered quickly and hustled to the Thursday morning session of the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship. My colleagues Brian Trelstad (Chief Investment Officer) and Varun Sahni (India Director) had arrived earlier, but there were so many attendees milling around the lobby engaged in animated conversations that I didn’t see Brian or Varun until later in the day.

I spent some time at a panel on Community Development (moderated by 2007 Acumen Fund Fellow Keely Stevenson). As always, Martin Burt (Fundacion Paraguaya), Vera Cordeiro (Reneascer) and Craig Kielburger (Free the Children) inspire and impress.

I’ve met Craig on several occasions and he is an extraordinary young man. His organization is about engaging children as responsible global citizens and the curriculum he has developed for children is mandatory in Canadian public middle schools. He is now getting some traction in US schools (tough nuts to crack!) and has also created a summer leadership program for kids. Acumen has several initiatives underway to reach out to engage more directly with teenagers and college students, and Craig has promised me a brainpick on “kid engagement” during his next trip to NY.

Good panel in the afternoon called “(Financial) Power to the People”, featuring three entrepreneurs who have created big online marketplaces: Premal Shah (Kiva.org, online micro-lending), Mari Kuriashi (Global Giving, online donations) and Mads Kjaer (MYC4, online investing). They are all trying to build movements and to give people the sense that they are part of something bigger and dynamic, the goal is “ to broaden the base of social activism”.

By definition, they all deal with huge stakeholder communities, including their respective lenders/donors/investors and have explored various means of keeping them engaged without expending too much bandwidth. One (Premal) talked about having conference calls with thousands of listeners, each with the ability to type in questions. Premal is also thinking about how to close the gap between lender and borrower. Is there a way through a web cam or Skype that the lender could see how the borrower’s business is doing with the loan? And why would the information all need to be going from south to north to make the lender (north) feel good? Why not advice or other non-financial resources going from north to south (or vice versa!) to help the borrower?

These entrepreneurs are not daunted by the enormous numbers in their respective spheres, they only want to increase them . They spoke of crowdsourcing, a new term for me. Mads talked of his dream to create an investment fund with BILLIONS of investors, at one euro a share. He thinks a whole new vocabulary will be crafted in the online social enterprise space and the words haven’t yet been invented (he reminded us that “iron horse” preceded the word “train” and “horseless carriage” preceded the word “car”). They share the dream of making transactions in the social enterprise space as easy as ordering a book from Amazon online and so exciting that the individual tells her friend and the friend tells a friend etc. Mari’s Global Giving not only lets a person make a donation online but also sells gift certificates so that the ultimate recipient can choose to which charity he’d like to donate.

The panel talked about organizational issues as well. Mads talked about the complexity of running a non-profit organization in affiliation with a for-profit one. Premal described about how Kiva was on the brink of bankruptcy in the fall of 2006. Then Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Prize and micro-lending burst onto the global scene. Overnight, Kiva’s volume of business grew exponentially and their website was down four days because it could not handle the volume. Business has continued to grow (Kiva says it raises $1 million in $25 increments every 10 days) and their annual operating budget is $5million—Premal does not want it to increase any further but wants to use more and better technology to increase efficiency and support scaling. Interestingly, Kiva has 12 volunteers for every fulltime employee, but the volunteers need to make a minimum 4 month full-time commitment. His advice to new social entrepreneurs: “keep your burn rate down until serendipity hits”.

Later, I spent some time dropping into other panels. “Expansion Finance for Social Impact” was among the best. The late afternoon session was the awards ceremony for the 9 Skoll Awards. I was particularly excited about Soraya Salti who is dazzling in every way. She is doing great things with Injaz which provides youth business training in 12 Arab countries.

A casual dinner with friends from Rockefeller, Visionspring, Lex Mundi Foundation, McKinsey, Mercy Corps, IDEO, Bamboo Finance, Rockefeller, Ashoka and others made for a very full but enjoyable day.

Last Sunday, I had the opportunity to speak on two panels at the 10th Annual Harvard Social Enterprise Conference. The SE Conference is an impressive, energetic gathering, with more than 1,000 attendees packed in on a snowy day in Boston. The backdrop of the financial crisis was everywhere, and you could tell that many students on campus are thinking differently about their careers. At the same time, nearly every panel referred to the opportunity presented by the Obama administration, specifically the potential for the Office of Social Innovation, which from all reports is on the verge of being created.

A keynote by Linda Rottenberg kicked off the day, providing perspective on the arc of the social enterprise sector over the last decade and our opportunities for the years to come. Linda asserted that we spent the first 10 years answering the question, “What IS social enterprise?” and that we’ll spend the next 10 answering, “What have you DONE?” I agree with Linda, though I think that the sector still has a long way to go in terms of clarifying our language and explaining in simple terms what we are and the unique value we bring in combining the best of the private and public sectors as levers for change.

In my morning panel, I had the opportunity to share the stage with Jeff Walker, Ex-Chairman and CEO of CCMP Capital and Chairman of Millennium Promise; Michael Chu, one of the founders of Accion Internacional (an early microfinance pioneer) and Co-Founder and Managing Director of IGNIA Fund; and Peter Kellner, co-founder of Endeavor and Co-Founder and Managing Director of Uhuru Capital Management (launched on Monday), a fund of funds that will give a portion of its management fees to support social enterprises.

The room was packed, with close to 150 people in a classroom that comfortably seats 90. Each panelist gave opening remarks, and we jumped into the discussion. Early in the discussion, Michael Chu made the observation that, across the panel, we represented “a spectrum of theories of change,” each complementary in nature. 

Michael makes a good point, especially given that, from the outside, it may look like we’re all trying to bring capital to bear in a new way to fight poverty and make social change. But the theories of change do differ. 

Millennium Promise uses almost all philanthropic capital to catalyze a set of simultaneous interventions in Millennium Villages, and the results in terms of increased agricultural output, decreased disease burden, and improvements in well-being in these villages is impressive.

Acumen Fund, with our focus in India, Pakistan and East Africa, has set out to provide critical goods and services to the poor, as a way of removing barriers and bringing choice and opportunity. With more than $40 million in approved investments that have touched more than 30 million lives, we have a solid investment track record and have invested in many of the most successful social ventures in the geographies where we operate. We are “impact first” investors, and our main goal is return of our capital, not return on capital.

Endeavor’s principle aim is to foster the growth of “high impact” entrepreneurs in the developing world – to create a vibrant entrepreneurial economy to catalyze change.

And IGNIA, which began making investments in 2008, is leveraging its experience with Compartamos microfinance bank which, in its recent IPO, gave outsized financial returns in addition to its large-scale social impact.  Michael Chu was clear that IGNIA’s goal is to invest in small- and medium-sized enterprises with an explicit goal of “above market” returns.” 

Given the amount of opportunity, the scarcity of capital, how underserved these markets are, and the potential of entrepreneurs to create new business models that integrate the best of the private and public sectors, this is not a question of which is the “right” approach.  Rather, our collective opportunity is to roll up our sleeves, do the work, be rigorous and transparent about what we are seeing and learning, and to be relentless about sharing these lessons learned so that the sector as a whole can better understand where and how we can use the market as a listening device to learn how best to lift millions of people out of poverty.

Fortunately, thanks to the ANDE network, the Rockefeller Foundation’s Global Impact Investing Network, and Acumen Fund’s PULSE platform to collaborate on metrics, the sector as a whole is creating the platforms we need for more collaboration. Stay tuned.

Editor’s note: You can also follow Sasha Dichter on his personal blog at http://sashadichter.wordpress.com

Not yet. That was the first message I heard at Social Capital Markets today, as I approached the registration table; they weren’t ready for me yet. In fact, they weren’t ready for me, nor were they ready for the 20 other people who had queued up early. If there’s any indication of interest in a conference or event, it’s usually the line of people arriving 2 or 3 hours early. (No, they weren’t giving away iPhones.) Read my SoCap08 conference preview here for some context.

When the table finally opened, I was greeted by a familiar face – Meredith Lobel, now a second year MBA student at Harvard Business School and formerly a tried-and-true changemaker with Ashoka. She’s volunteering here at SoCap08.

Two hours later, the excitement hasn’t died down; in fact, it has steamrolled. Thus far, I’ve run into other base of the pyramid and social enterprise veterans including Jocelyn Wyatt of IDEO, Margot Brandenburg of Rockefeller Foundation, Dev Appanah from ChangeFusion, Pradeep Suthram from the Social Stock Exchange and Ray Cheung from New Ventures. I’m sure more will be filing in as the day continues. (In fact, as I wrote that sentence, David Auerbach and Elmira Bayrasli from Endeavor took seats behind me, and I noticed Ted London across the room.)

All this momentum, despite the fact that the weather’s beautiful and it’s a federal holiday in the United States – people could certainly make the excuse to beg off the event and enjoy the weather.

So – is this momentum just hype or is there some substance behind it? Our first speaker – and the conference organizer, Kevin Jones, opens with an anecdote and a data point: of the 600+ attendees, more than 450 of us registered after Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. That’s for a capital markets conference in a financial markets meltdown…which is at least an indicator of the interest here and the fact that we need to do something different.

While Kevin speaks, a few more people walked in. Wilton Agatstein, retired from Intel and now an Executive in Residence at UC Davis, squeezed into a seat on the floor. Another Will, another seat on the floor – this time it’s Willy Foote, founder and CEO of Root Capital. Aden Van Noppen, who interned with us at Acumen Fund this summer, is standing against the opposite wall. It’s really amazing how this conference is filling up.

We’re off to track sessions – so that’s all for now. More from the panel sessions and the keynotes later today. By the way, Sasha Dichter, Brad Presner and I will all be speaking here at SoCap this week…hope to see you if you’re here!