Microsoft Corporate Vice President Mary Snapp is now the head of Microsoft Philanthropies. She oversees more than $1 billion of giving annually. Photo: Microsoft.
Microsoft — the company that already gives the most cash to Washington nonprofits — announced in December that it is expanding its commitment to corporate philanthropy and has formed a division within the company, Microsoft Philanthropies, that will align its giving with its core business mission.
Microsoft Philanthropies will focus on connecting “the benefits of technology to those who need it most and work harder to drive inclusive growth of the global economy,” said Microsoft President Brad Smith in a blog post. The company’s giving has surpassed $1 billion, with cash donations of nearly $120 million and in-kind donations worth nearly $950 million. Now the company’s philanthropic arm continues that giving but directs it by making strategic investments of cash and technology in digital inclusion programs and partnerships, mobilizing the technical talents of employees and forming creative and collaborative partnerships, and using its brand power to highlight and call others to action.
Click here to read the full article in Puget Sound Business Journal.
Washington state has a vibrant global health community and is a leader in efforts to eliminate and eradicate diseases that plague developing countries such as polio, malaria and guinea worm. We have made tremendous progress to eradicate polio and guinea worm, and are emboldened by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s declaration that malaria can be eliminated with sufficient investments, ambitious strategies and new technologies.
This month, Global Washington formed a special partnership with the Washington Global Health Alliance to spotlight the work of the global health community in our state in the race to wipe out infectious disease. None of this will be easy. In fact, it might be the most difficult thing the global health community has faced. But with organizations such as PATH, Malaria No More and the Gates Foundation leading the way, Seattle will be known as a driving force in making a healthier and more prosperous world. Read more about these local champions in the issue brief below.
We celebrated progress made in global health at last week’s Spring Member Celebration, in addition to recognizing achievements in other areas such as financial services, global education, economic development and land rights. Thank you to everyone who attended and partied on the dance floor. I continue to be inspired by this tremendous community of people.
Control, Eliminate, Eradicate: Global Efforts to Wipe Out Disease
By Amanda Pain
Photo Credit: VillageReach
In 1980, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the eradication of smallpox, the first and only infectious disease to meet this fate. Eradication of a disease is defined as the permanent reduction to zero of the worldwide incidence of infection. The road to eradication includes stops at control, the reduction of disease incidence, prevalence, morbidity or mortality to a locally acceptable level, followed by elimination, the reduction to zero of the incidence of infection in a defined geographical area.
Smallpox has several characteristics that made eradication possible: an effective vaccine which could prevent infection with a single dose, highly visible symptoms with a short incubation period, and transmission occurring only human-to-human. Since the last known case of smallpox, The International Task Force for Disease Eradication has been coordinating efforts to rid the world of infectious diseases. However, each disease is unique and has its own set of challenges on the path to eradication. To illustrate how diseases differ in treatment, interventions and challenges, this article will focus on global efforts to eradicate polio, guinea worm and malaria.
Polio, also called poliomyelitis, is believed to be the next infectious disease in line for eradication because it has been eliminated everywhere except for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Polio is a viral infectious disease transmitted from person to person through the fecal-oral route. The virus primarily affects children under age five, and one in 200 infections can lead to irreversible paralysis. Polio cases have decreased by 99 percent since 1988, and in 2015 there were only 22 reported cases of polio worldwide. This reduction is due to coordinated efforts of The Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI). In order to tackle the two remaining endemic countries with polio, the GPEI developed the Polio Eradication and Endgame Strategic Plan 2013-2018 to rid the world of polio by 2018.
Polio eradication strategy involves the immunization of every child, strong surveillance to detect and interrupt transmission and a long-term plan to ensure vulnerable countries do not see reemergence of infection. In April, a new bivalent oral polio vaccine started being distributed globally. This new vaccine protects against polio types 1 and 3 (type 2 was eradicated in 1999) and is stronger than the previous oral vaccine. Many of the challenges to eradicating polio are due to instability in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The remaining areas with polio infection are isolated and people have limited access to vaccines, and face security problems.
Guinea worm disease, also known as dracunculus medinensis, is caused by a parasitic worm which enters the body through ingestion of contaminated water. When a person drinks the worm larvae living in nearby water sources, the larvae migrate through intestinal walls, mate, and after 10 to 14 months the pregnant female extracts itself painfully from the foot of the host. The adult female worm carries three million embryos, and can measure 60 to 100 centimeters in length. For pain relief, infected people place the affected area in water, releasing the larvae back into the water source for the next victim. There is no treatment to prevent infection or heal a person of guinea worm. While rarely fatal, a person can suffer from infection at the site of extraction leading to skin ulcers and permanent disability. Eradication of guinea worm depends solely on access to clean drinking water.
The good news is that, in 2015, there were only 22 reported cases of guinea worm in four countries (Chad, Mali, South Sudan and Ethiopia). Eradication efforts include detecting cases within 24 hours, health education and ensuring access to safe drinking water. Since 1986, The Carter Center has led the international campaign for guinea worm eradication, and today cases have been reduced by 99.99 percent. Once eradicated, it will be the first parasitic disease to meet this fate, as well as the first disease eradicated without the use of vaccines or medications. Challenges to guinea worm eradication include infections in remote areas where interventions can not reach people, as well as dogs hosting the parasite which has led to increased human transmission in Chad and Ethiopia.
Malaria is an infectious disease of the blood caused by the plasmodium parasite and is transmitted from person to person by the female anopheles mosquito. Once the parasite enters the body, it lodges in the host’s liver, multiples, and enters the blood stream to infect red blood cells. Without treatment, malaria leads to death. In Africa, a child dies every two minutes from malaria and, in 2015, there were an estimated 214 million cases of malaria worldwide (mostly in pregnant women and children). In 2015, sub-Saharan Africa accounted for 88 percent of malaria cases and 90 percent of malaria deaths. Approximately half of the world’s population is at risk of malaria, but the disease is preventable and curable.
The Global Malaria Eradication Program launched by WHO in 1955 was the first attempt at eradicating malaria. The program was criticized for its one-size-fits-all approach, lack of community involvement and lack of research and evaluation on intervention methods. It was abandoned in 1970. Since 2000, improved interventions have decreased the incidence of malaria by 37 percent globally, and mortality rates in children under age five have fallen by 58 percent. Interventions today include rapid diagnostic tests, malaria medications for treatment and prevention, availability of insecticide treated bed nets (since mosquitos carrying the virus feed at night) as well as indoor insecticide spraying. A malaria vaccine is also in development. The new goal is a major reduction of malaria cases and deaths by 2030 and the WHO Global Technical Strategy for Malaria 2016-2030 outlines a plan to achieve this.
Malaria has a longer and more challenging road to eradication when compared to polio and guinea worm, but important achievements are being made in the fight to end malaria. In April, Europe was the first region in the world to be certified as malaria-free by the WHO. This is defined as zero locally acquired malaria cases for three consecutive years. Two major challenges to other regions of the world becoming malaria-free are insecticide resistance by mosquitos and medication resistance by strains of the virus. Another challenge is that a majority of transmissions start with asymptomatic people, requiring medical professionals to diagnose patients who have yet to show symptoms, and then treat them before transmission can occur.
Polio, guinea worm and malaria are unique diseases each with their own unique challenges, much like other infectious diseases that are causing death and disability around the world. While the road to eradication for each disease has many paths and varies in length, global health organizations must continue to collaborate and pursue solutions. Below are several GlobalWA members working towards eradication of infectious diseases. Learn more about these organizations and others on our interactive member map.
Health & Hope Foundation (HHF) provides dental, vision, non-surgical medical care and preventative healthcare education tools to impoverished communities who otherwise lack access or means for care. Clinics are on-site and portable allowing for access to rural areas. By teaming with local leaders, specific community needs such as disease prevention, clean water, light, education, sexual safely, safe living conditions and sustainable business are illuminated. Local leaders are developed to address these needs within HHF programs or by linking them with specialized NGOs. www.healthandhopefoundation.org
Malaria No More (MNM) is working to create a world where no child dies from a mosquito bite. Using strategic advocacy and innovative partnerships to engage global leaders, rally the public and deliver lifesaving tools and education to families across Africa, MNM aims to create the political will and mobilize the global resources required to achieve malaria eradication within our generation. They work with leaders of malaria-endemic countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America to increase the amount of attention and funding they commit to malaria each year, elevating it on the global health and international development agenda. www.malarianomore.org
Medical Teams International works to stem the tide of communicable diseases among vulnerable populations in locations where access to health care and medicine is lacking. In Uganda, this means curbing malarial infections, particularly among refugees. Medical Teams was instrumental in quelling the deadly cholera outbreak that swept through Haiti following the devastating 2010 earthquake, and preventing further outbreaks. And in Liberia, Medical Teams has worked to build durable partnerships to strengthen health systems in the fight against Ebola. Through clinical case management, prevention, education and early diagnosis, Medical Teams aims to stamp out the spread of deadly diseases around the globe. www.medicalteams.org
PATH is a leader in global health innovation. An international nonprofit, PATH saves lives and improves health, especially among women and children, and works alongside countries primarily in Africa and Asia to tackle their greatest health needs. With a network of partners, both in the Pacific Northwest and around the world, PATH advances high-impact, low-cost approaches to not only manage and control stubborn diseases, but to end them completely. Recently, PATH and their partners helped vaccinate more than 235 million people against meningitis A in sub-Saharan Africa — nearly eliminating it as a major health threat in the span of five years. Through the PATH Center for Malaria Control and Elimination, the organization is building on their unparalleled portfolio of malaria tools and projects — including cutting-edge research and development of malaria drugs, diagnostics, and vaccines — to advance efforts toward elimination. PATH’s work in disease elimination also includes diagnostics and other tools to fight polio and neglected tropical diseases like river blindness and lymphatic filariasis. www.path.org.
With over 16 million cases of malaria per year in a population of only 34 million, Ugandans have the highest malaria transmission rates in the world, and status quo measures are not reducing malaria fast enough. In partnership with Uganda’s Ministry of Health, Rotary International, Seattle #4 Rotary Club and Peace Corps Uganda, Pilgrim Africa is charting a course for the most cost-effective, safest and fastest way to reduce malaria in high transmission settings. Pilgrim Africa’s newest operational research project combines and sequences the most effective malaria interventions for mosquito control and medical management in order to rapidly reduce malaria transmission and maintain the new lower rates. This intervention is predicted by mathematical modeling to remove over 90% of the death and disease caused by malaria and to provide a cost-effective solution at scale. www.pilgrimafrica.org
Founded in 1997, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works in developing countries to improve people’s health and to lift them out of extreme poverty. The Foundation’s global health and development work uses advances in science and technology, and works with partners in developing countries to deliver vaccines, drugs and diagnostics. The Gates Foundation works to find new solutions and interventions to improve efficiency and effectiveness and ensure these methods reach those most in need. The Foundation also invests in vaccines for HIV, polio and malaria, as well as supports integrated health solutions for family planning, nutrition and maternal and child health. www.gatesfoundation.org
UNICEF, the world’s largest buyer of vaccines, provides immunization for forty percent of the world’s children. Today, infant and childhood vaccination saves up to 3 million children’s lives a year. Conflict, displacement and poverty keep some of the most vulnerable children from getting the vaccines they need. If all children were immunized with existing vaccines, by 2020 we would save nearly 25 million lives. Thanks to UNICEF and partners’ global immunization and vaccine efforts, polio has almost — but not quite — disappeared. In 2014, India joined the ranks of the polio-free, a major achievement thanks to lifesaving polio vaccines, and in 2015, Nigeria reached a milestone when it went a full year without a single case of polio. www.unicefusa.org
VillageReach increases access to quality healthcare by improving the capacity and efficiency of health systems in the world’s most underserved communities. With a particular emphasis in last mile supply chain systems, VillageReach has developed innovative approaches to improve transport and logistics for vaccine delivery and other essential medicines, including HIV medicines and other related supplies to test and treat infectious diseases. www.villagereach.org
A data collector, community health worker and district malaria focal person look at a mobile phone with the village of Harmony in the background. Photo Credit: PATH/Gabe Bienczycki.
Malaria, an infectious disease of the blood caused by the plasmodium parasite, is responsible for over 400,000 deaths and nearly half of the world’s population is at risk of infection each year. Spread through mosquitoes, malaria affects millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa, especially pregnant women and children. Eliminating a disease that infects so many people requires a smart and strategic approach. PATH, an international nonprofit organization headquartered in Seattle, understands this.
“PATH works on a number of platforms to address malaria,” said Dr. Nanthalile Mugala, Country Program Leader for Zambia. “PATH is not just working at the system and service implementation level, but also addresses innovations in new drugs, diagnostics, as well as vaccine candidates that could reduce malaria prevalence.”
PATH contributes to the control and elimination of malaria in endemic countries and has worked with partners to save 6.2 million lives over the past 15 years through scale up of malaria interventions. PATH’s Center for Malaria Control and Elimination brings together expertise to develop new and improved tools and approaches to attack the deadly disease. PATH has pioneered innovations to improve diagnostic tools, increase malaria drug supply, and has helped to develop what could become the first-ever licensed malaria vaccine, MosquirixTM. PATH also partners with national governments and local communities. For example, the Malaria Control and Elimination Partnership in Africa (MACEPA) has partnered with the Zambian government to reduce malaria prevalence in parts of Zambia, according to Mugala.
“Whatever work we do as non-governmental organizations (NGOs), can only be effective if we work with government systems,” said Mugala. “One of PATH’s key mandates is to ensure capacity building among local people to help sustain progress.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) has a global strategy to reduce incidence of malaria by 90 percent, and to eliminate it in 35 countries by 2030. Mugala believes PATH has contributed to the global reduction of malaria, and will be a key player in the WHO strategy. In Zambia alone, PATH has been working to reduce malaria since 2004 and is helping the Zambian government eliminate malaria by 2020, ten years earlier than the WHO target. Mugala said the Zambian government believes this 2020 target is possible partly because PATH’s efforts in partnership with the Zambian government’s National Malaria Control Centre have led to large reductions in malaria prevalence in Southern Province.
PATH has also helped Zambia improve its data collection methods. “Having credible data regarding the magnitude of the problem in various geographical areas helps to focus resources,” said Mugala. PATH has strongly supported the government in data management efforts to strengthen malaria programs.
Mugala believes PATH has also been instrumental in engaging local communities and training health workers to test and treat people for malaria. “National level commitment and pronouncements can be made, but I think ultimately the people at the household level will make elimination a success.” PATH works with community leaders to attain village engagement and holds community meetings to explain malaria transmission and prevention. The meetings also help communities learn what is happening, and take ownership of the malaria program activities. “Malaria is a household name in Zambia,” said Mugala, “but people are not always clear on how it is transmitted.” She emphasized that engaging communities and giving people the tools to prevent malaria is critical in achieving elimination.
Trained as a medical doctor, Mugala spent 15 years practicing medicine before moving full-time into the public health sphere. “One of the things that doctors and nurses would complain about in Zambia was how full the hospitals always were,” she said. “You wonder why this person is coming so late to the hospital often in a severe condition. When you are working in public heath, you actually have a chance to contribute to preventing disease and promoting interventions that improve access to appropriate timely treatment services so people won’t end up in the hospital.”
Racheal Mokosha, District Malaria Focal Person, stands in front of a crowd of children in Harmony village. Photo Credit: PATH/Gabe Bienczycki.
Prevention methods used in Zambia include providing households with insecticide treated bed nets, as well as conducting indoor residual spraying of insecticides. Mugala said PATH also helps to train community health workers to test and treat for malaria. If a household has a positive case of malaria, the health worker will test everyone in that household and in surrounding households. Anyone with a positive result receives treatment immediately. To date, PATH has contributed to the training of more than 2,500 of these health workers — volunteers chosen by their communities — in surveillance to identify, contain and clear malaria infection in their villages.
The Zambian government, with assistance from PATH and other partners, is forming a strategy to eliminate malaria by 2020. Mugala believes the biggest challenge to this goal is ensuring that Zambia has the required financial and human resources. She also stressed the importance of working with neighboring countries to monitor and reduce transmission across borders. “I am happy that we have set a benchmark. It is going to be hard work and we will need sustained commitment and adequate resources.”
Mugala believes, if Zambia succeeds in eliminating malaria, sub-Saharan Africa can use the country as a model to control and eventually eliminate malaria in other African countries. “Often having the evidence that something can be done motivates everybody to want to try,” said Mugala. “PATH has been consistently and successfully working on malaria for the past ten years, and it is highly respected. You cannot mention malaria right now without mentioning PATH’s contribution.”
Ananda Bandyopadhyay, Senior Program Officer, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
By Amanda Pain
Ananda Bandyopadhyay has what he calls a love-hate relationship with polio. While he was never particularly fascinated with polio as a topic as a medical student, he witnessed many peers suffering from the disease. “Growing up in India was really my exposure to the real world, in terms of what diseases really mean beyond the medicine books,” he said. With the ultimate vision of being a cardiologist, Bandyopadhyay was a young medical graduate when he took a job at the World Health Organization’s (WHO) National Polio Surveillance Project (NPSP).
“A few months into my new job in the (polio) eradication program I was completely fascinated. I never would have realized public health would have so much impact,” said Bandyopadhyay. What initially was billed as only a six-month break from practicing medicine, he ended up staying at WHO for four years, and went on to receive a Master’s degree in global health from Harvard University. Currently a Senior Program Officer with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s polio program, polio has become Bandyopadhyay’s life’s work.
A highly infectious viral disease largely affecting children under age five, polio has been reduced globally by 99 percent since 1988. When Bandyopadhyay took the position at WHO, India was highly endemic with a rapid transmission rate. He said the most challenging part of elimination in India was reaching everyone. “You knew that the vaccine worked, but you could not just administer it once. You actually had to go back to the same remote village over and over again to essentially beat the speed of transmission with the speed of your vaccination activities. It’s incredible now looking back that India actually succeeded.”
Bandyopadhyay examining an infant in Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh, India.
Bandyopadhyay described the work to eliminate polio in India as a social movement that went beyond a health program. Health workers had to overcome social and economic challenges, deal with language and cultural differences, as well as ensure that local and national governments were committed to eliminating the disease. According to Bandyopadhyay, India is an example to the world that a diverse and populous country can unite together for a common cause. Polio was eliminated in India in 2011.
Today the remaining cases of polio are in remote areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Elimination in these last endemic areas are challenging not because of reluctance to prevention or treatment methods, but rather due to lack of access, said Bandyopadhyay. “If you look at the big picture, the proportion of those reluctant to vaccination is very small. Most of the population is willing to take up not only vaccinations, but also health care interventions. The challenge is actually reaching them, and doing that over and over again.”
Polio vaccination campaign during floods in Bihar, India.
With the Gates Foundation’s polio team, Bandyopadhyay works on a research portfolio that aims to improve vaccines, improve vaccine delivery and improve surveillance systems to track and respond to new outbreaks of polio. Much of this work is planning how to sustain polio eradication once achieved. Bandyopadhyay believes the world has the tools needed to eradicate polio, but ensuring eradication will require the world to be united in the fight. “The virus that we are fighting is a noble one that doesn’t discriminate based on race, socioeconomic status, nationality or religion,” he said. “Being immunized or not is all that matters to the virus and we should take that same approach in our eradication efforts.”
Knowing the world is close to eradicating polio, the disease Bandyopadhyay has dedicated his career to fighting, what’s next for him?
“I’ll take a break and retire,” he joked. He went on to explain that the job is never really over, even when polio cases reach zero. “That will be a huge achievement, but after that you have to ensure that children are still protected with vaccines, and that we are still alert with the surveillance activities.” Bandyopadhyay believes the world will have to work to sustain polio eradication, and then leverage this work to control and eradicate other infectious diseases.
“I consider myself a foot solider in this battle to eradicate the virus,” he said. “I am most proud when I describe myself as a vaccinator. The very fact that people are dying from vaccine-preventable diseases bothers me, and I think it bothers all of us. After polio eradication, there will still be a lot to do.”
By Kayla Ihrig, Communications Coordinator, American Red Cross, NW Region
I first heard about Marta last September. By this time, her story was known by most of my colleagues as “The Ukraine Sisters.” She was at the heart of an unbelievable story of separation—72 years!—suddenly reunited with her sister on a Skype call from Idaho to Ukraine.
It all came together last summer when a search launched in 2008 finally bore fruit. The result was unexpected discovery for Marta Kruk Lysnewycz, who was born in Ukraine in 1926 and currently lives in Sandpoint, Idaho. Through a Red Cross program called Restoring Family Links, her sister, Vassia, who was taken for forced labor in WWII and was thought to have been killed, was found. She was still alive and living in a remote Ukrainian village. Continue Reading
Nearly three billion people live in areas of the world where the rights of LGBTIQ individuals are abused. While LGBTIQ rights are gaining visibility and people in all walks of life are better understanding the importance of these rights, there is a battle to be fought and this is only the beginning.
OutRight Action International, a GlobalWA member, is on the frontlines of this fight. OutRight is dedicated to worldwide human rights advocacy for those who experience discrimination because of their perceived or actual sexual orientation, gender or expression. Jessica Stern, OutRight’s Executive Director based out of the New York headquarters, led the April 28 GlobalWA Executive Director Roundtable. Amie Bishop, Co-Chair of OutRight’s board and a Seattle resident, joined her at the table, along with Ashton Giese, OutRight’s Development Associate. Continue Reading
3CF made its first impact investment in Nam Thang Long, a company that manufactures life-jacket backpacks which prevent early childhood drowning during monsoon season in Vietnam.
3rd Creek Foundation (3CF) is a small organization, but at just 12% the asset size of the average U.S. private family foundation, it has a big vision: a world without poverty. Since its founding in 2007, 3CF has made grants to small organizations in developing countries around the world who are working to alleviate poverty in their communities. These grants follow the standard 5% annual payout rate mandated for perpetual foundations. To increase impact without spending down principal, 3CF has implemented a strategy to apply more funds toward mission related activity through impact investing. 3CF makes small-sized investments of up to $20K directly in early stage businesses in South Asia and East Africa. This outlay is important because there are roughly thousands of small social enterprises with sound business models that lack access to much needed capital. As mentioned by Capria, early stage enterprises make up the “missing middle,” and are unable to access capital from microfinance institutions, local banks, and most impact investors who make larger sized investments. Continue Reading
April 25, 2016 marks the 1-year anniversary of the 7.8 magnitude Nepal earthquake — the first in a series of tremors — that devastated the Kathmandu Valley.
The day after the first earthquake, Splash staff in Nepal began surveying the damage at their partner schools, realizing they were the first relief aid to arrive. “The schools were very amazed,” said Kriti Baidya, a Partner Support Coordinator at Splash Nepal. Not one of Splash’s hard-wired water filtration systems had been permanently damaged. “The Splash team was at the school giving a hygiene training to the children [when the second earthquake, a 6.7 magnitude tremor, struck on April 26, 2015]. We faced the earthquake in the school itself.” Kriti recalled. It was lucky that the first, and most powerful, earthquake had hit on a Saturday when schools were not in session.
Several thought leaders in financing for development believe impact investing is the wave of the future and one way to help fill the trillion dollar gap needed to reduce poverty. This relatively new financing approach blends financial returns with social or environmental returns. Investors in the Pacific Northwest, including nonprofits and foundations, are promoting impact investing as a smart and sustainable approach to international development. You can read more about the topic and GlobalWA members doing impact investing in the issue brief below.
Our region is home to smart leaders in impact investing as well as other amazing leaders working on a variety of solutions to global poverty. In fact, this recent New York Times article features Seattle as a growing hub for global development. This is what Global Washington is about, and we’re bringing the community together on May 12 to celebrate. It will be an evening of delicious food and drinks, fun entertainment and auction items, and great company. I hope you will join us to toast the hard work our members do every day.
Impact Investing: Bridging the Gap to Meet Global Needs
By Andie Long
Photo Credit: Upaya Social Ventures
When it comes to financing solutions that address global poverty and inequality, there remains a persistent gap. Traditional funding sources have remained static or in some cases shrunk, just as needs have exploded worldwide. It is this gap that a growing form of financing, impact investment, intends to fill.
While 18th century economist Adam Smith identified self-interest as the “invisible hand” of the market, proponents of impact investing have dubbed it the market’s “invisible heart.” First coined in 2007, the term “impact investment” refers to “investments made into companies, organizations, and funds with the intention to generate social and environmental impact alongside a financial return,” according to the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN). Unlike socially responsible investing, which aims to do no harm, impact investing intentionally looks for investments that can do the most good.
Put together, all of global philanthropy and aid funding amounts to billions of dollars. At the same time, the costs of solving problems such as access to healthcare, affordable housing, education, nutritious food, clean water, and more, add up to trillions of dollars. These challenges have only accelerated due to climate change and shifting geopolitical forces, all of which have ratcheted up the pressure on vulnerable communities around the world.
The annual impact investor survey report, released last year by GIIN and J.P. Morgan, surveyed 146 investors and found that collectively they manage over $60 billion in impact investments. If impact investments made up just 1% of total investments worldwide, it would amount to $2 trillion. This is what makes impact investing such an intriguing option.
There exists a wide range of businesses that attract impact investment funding today, from small women-owned enterprises and cleaner, more cost-effective energy solutions, to integrated mobile offerings that support small-holder farmers. Such investments vary according to investors’ risk tolerance, time horizons and expected rates of return.
While financial returns are relatively easy to measure, tracking and measuring the social and environmental returns on investments takes a bit more finesse. The leading measurement systems that impact investors use are B Analytics’ Global Impact Investing Rating System and the Impact Reporting and Investment Standards, managed by GIIN.
Nobody believes that impact investing alone is the answer. Grant money is still needed to take the risk out of new ventures and to explore untapped opportunities. Often, however, there is quite a bit of overlap between philanthropic spending and impact investing. A ruling by the IRS last year reassured private foundations that they may use their endowments to make investments that generate below market-rate returns without jeopardizing their favorable tax status. As a result, more foundations may be expected to add impact investing to their giving portfolios.
Depending on their size, expertise and focus areas, international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) also may be uniquely positioned to incorporate impact investing into their work. Jenny Everett, the deputy director of the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs, has suggested that INGOs could add the most value by financing loans in the $25,000 to $500,000 range, the smaller end of the scale from what most institutional investors would normally finance, due to the perceived risk and management such loans would require. Additionally, INGO’s can help entrepreneurs develop their skills and their business models to the point where impact investors might deem them ready for larger investments.
Washington state has a number of organizations involved with impact investing in various ways. Below are descriptions of GlobalWA members that incorporate this unique approach in their work throughout the world. Learn more about these members and others on GlobalWA’s interactive map.
Global Partnerships is a nonprofit impact-led investor whose mission is to expand opportunity for people living in poverty. It invests in social enterprises that deliver high-impact products and services to poor families and communities in Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa. Its partners provide access to financial services, healthcare, education, training, clean energy and connections to markets. This access empowers people living in poverty to create better lives for themselves and for future generations. Since 1994, Global Partnerships has impacted more than 3.6 million lives by investing $183 million in 86 partners across 13 countries. www.globalpartnerships.org
Over the past decade, Grameen Foundation has helped fuel the growth of social enterprises that create income-generating opportunities for women and the poor, and deliver products or services that improve their lives. It has supported multiple social impact funds, and, as a founding sponsor of the Fairtrade Access Fund, a $25 million debt fund in developing countries, Grameen Foundation and its partners have enabled farmers’ organizations and members to affordably invest in processing facilities, farm improvements and new equipment. Grameen Foundation has also invested in social enterprises in Kenya. There, investments ranging from $250,000 to $750,000 have helped fill the start-up “pioneer gap,” where funding is most urgently needed. www.grameenfoundation.org/
In 2015, Mercy Corps launched its Social Venture Fund, a seed and early-stage impact investment fund, focused on capitalizing and accelerating for-profit social ventures in Kenya, Uganda, Indonesia and Nepal. Focus areas include agriculture, financial services, last-mile distribution, and youth and female employment. Social Venture Fund investments range from $50,000 to $300,000 (equity, debt or quasi-equity), and businesses selected for investment are those with the potential to scale nationally and regionally to sustainably impact over 1 million people. www.mercycorps.org/innovations/social-venture-fund
Unitus Seed Fund is India’s leading venture fund supporting startups “innovating for the masses.” Since 2013, the fund has made a total of 23 investments across sectors including education, healthcare, fin-tech, agriculture, retail and e-commerce, mobile and consumer. The fund’s latest impact report shows a doubling of portfolio reach, touching more than 650,000 low-income lives across 22 states in India. Founded in 2012, Unitus Seed Fund is part of the Unitus Group, a premier financial services group operating in India and other emerging markets since 2000. Unitus Seed Fund is based in Bangalore and Seattle, and is a member of the Capria Network. http://usf.vc/
Upaya creates dignified jobs for the poorest of the poor in India by investing in an ecosystem of profitable and scalable businesses in the poorest communities. Upaya runs a 24-36 month accelerator program that provides early-stage entrepreneurs with business development support and financial resources to launch and scale their businesses. The ten entrepreneurs currently in the portfolio employ over 2,500 women and men. Upaya tracks 25 social metrics, such as changes in household income, meals consumed per day, housing condition and children’s school attendance, to ensure employees are making progress out of extreme poverty. www.upayasv.org
3rd Creek Foundation (3CF) is a private family foundation dedicated to helping individuals achieve economic independence. A sister organization to 3rd Creek Investments, Inc., 3CF funds poverty alleviation programs in South Asia and East Africa through grant-making and impact investments. What makes 3CF unique is its size: 3CF makes impact investments of up to $20,000 per enterprise, reaching early stage social enterprises that often struggle to find financing. 3CF believes that employing effective, market-based solutions is key to helping individuals break out of poverty and sustainably improve livelihoods. www.3rdcreek.com/3rdcreekfoundation
Seattle-based Global Partnerships is an impact-led investor whose mission is to expand opportunity for people living in poverty. They invest in social enterprises in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa that deliver market-based products and services that empower people to earn a living, provide for the basic needs of their families, and improve their lives.
One of these social enterprises is Friendship Bridge, a nonprofit organization that empowers impoverished Guatemalan women to create a better future for themselves through microfinance and education using a village bank model. Village bank members gather on a regular basis to make deposits and to review outstanding business loans used to finance such things as restocking inventory for a grocery store, buying bulk food items for a restaurant, or expanding a business space.
All village bank members are women, and the training sessions that Friendship Bridge provides – from business and financial education to health and nutrition seminars – are geared toward meeting their needs. Health seminars, for example, might focus on dispelling misconceptions that can keep women from getting the right care. One common misconception in parts of rural Guatemala, is that if a woman is single, divorced or widowed, she doesn’t need a regular Pap smear test. This simple health screening, which can detect very early stage cancer cells on the cervix, has saved many thousands of lives around the world. In Guatemala, cervical cancer is the second most common cancer among women, and it certainly makes no distinctions in terms of the marital status of those it affects.
Besides microfinance and value-added services, such as those provided by Friendship Bridge, Global Partnerships also invests in social businesses. These include organizations like farming cooperatives that provide technical training, financing for high quality agricultural inputs and access to markets, so that smallholder farmers can increase their incomes. And businesses that sell solar lights in rural areas, allowing rural households, like their urban counterparts, to reap the benefits of clean, renewable, and affordable lighting. Solar lights, in fact, are one of the sustainable solutions that Global Partnerships’ research team identified early on that fueled its recent expansion into East Africa.
Global Partnerships opened its Nairobi, Kenya office in June 2015 to begin making impact investments in sub-Saharan Africa. “Africa still sees the most prevalent and persistent poverty rates in the world,” says Rick Beckett, the President and CEO of Global Partnerships. “They also have limited access to electricity, so solar lighting is highly relevant.”
These investments are supported through philanthropic capital, which Global Partnerships uses to conduct rigorous and thoughtful research to identify high-impact products and services like solar lights that can significantly benefit poor and marginalized groups in the developing world. These philanthropic funds also support the resource-intensive impact measurement that ensures these investments not only generate financial returns, but also create a positive social impact.
“There are not enough philanthropic dollars in the world to reach hundreds of millions of people on an ongoing basis,” says Beckett. “So you need both philanthropic capital, which is risk tolerant, and social investment capital, which values people and the planet in financing things that work.”
”Most of our investors, about 85 percent, are also donors,” says Beckett. “They see the value in blending different types of capital to make a true impact.”
Photo Credit: Friendship Bridge
Since 1994, Global Partnerships has impacted the lives of 3.6 million people across 13 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean through more than 300 investments made to 86 partners, totaling $183 million. With the expansion to Africa, they aspire to raise that impact to a total of $500 million in impact investments, impacting 30 million lives within the next ten years.
Steve Hollingworth, Chief Executive Officer, Grameen Foundation
By Andie Long
Steve Hollingworth, the Grameen Foundation’s newly appointed CEO, draws heavily on his Midwestern values in seeking ways to alleviate global poverty. The first, and most important, he believes is empathy.
“A deep sense of empathy would help people understand the tremendous loss of human potential from having close to a billion people go hungry every day,” says Hollingworth.
Growing up in Elgin, Illinois, a mid-sized city about an hour northwest of Chicago, Hollingworth had little exposure to global poverty. All that changed in the late 1970s when, as an undergraduate at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, he enrolled in a study abroad program in Bogota, Colombia, through the Universidad de los Andes. There he studied the economies of Latin American countries.
Hollingworth recalls the first time he witnessed the extreme injustice and despair of poverty in the faces of Bogota’s abandoned children. Referred to locally as gamines, they often huddled in the city’s sewers at night, and roamed the streets by day.
For the first time, Hollingworth also met people engaged in humanitarian work, people who countered the desperation of the gamines with a passionate commitment to social inclusion and justice. Accompanying these development workers, Hollingworth met many street children of Bogota, and learned of their stories.
It was this singular study abroad experience that set the course for Hollingworth’s entire career.
Back home in Illinois after his study abroad, Hollingworth announced his intention to go into the humanitarian field. He remembers everyone – his mother, teachers, friends – trying to talk him out of it. They worried about his safety and security, extended periods away from home, and how well he would be able to provide for his own family.
They needn’t have worried. Hollingworth has spent the last 30 years working in international development, serving the needs of the world’s poorest people, and at the same time being a devoted husband and father. Hollingworth and his wife, Ann Griffith, have three children: two daughters, Gwennan (now 31) and Angharad (29), and a son, Aled (27 years old). It is his wife, Ann, whom Hollingworth says has most influenced his life.
“Ann has had a lifelong commitment to international development issues,” says Hollingworth. “She comes from a family that has a strong ecumenical Christian background, and a very broad set of caring values. She’s always been informed and involved in issues related to poverty and human rights.”
In his continued search for solutions to poverty, Hollingworth holds two other deeply ingrained, and intertwined values: community and solidarity. “Our common good is more important than the individual enrichment of very few people,” he says.
As one example of how this manifests at the Grameen Foundation, Hollingworth references MOTECH, a digital technology system that Grameen Foundation first designed to use in Ghana and then later expanded into an open-source mobile platform, offered freely to other organizations that want to provide timely health information on a broad scale.
Why make such a useful product freely available? “It’s a community good,” Hollingworth says. “It’s not for proprietary interest.” Grameen Foundation itself is partnering with the government of India, using MOTECH to deliver crucial health information to pregnant women and new mothers in areas with high maternal and infant mortality. The program has already reached one million women, and aims to reach more than ten million.
Hollingworth notes that most nonprofit organizations can spend no more than US$4-$15 per beneficiary per year. Therefore, the overriding calculation is how to do the most good with limited resources. While open-source technology can help spread viable solutions across partners and networks more affordably, Hollingworth also cites the cost-effectiveness of investing in women.
“There’s a universal conclusion that if you want to arrest poverty, the most important thing is the ability of women to control the size of their family, contribute economically, and make decisions about the health and education of their children,” says Hollingworth. “If they have that power, it greatly reduces the chances of poverty in the next generation.”
Prior to coming to the Grameen Foundation, Hollingworth spent four years as the CEO of Freedom from Hunger. Before that, he held progressively more senior roles at CARE, including four years as chief operating officer, and also serving more than two decades in the field, including as country director in India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh – the largest CARE mission in the world.
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Restless Development
Restless Development USA works to establish strategic partnerships with international development agencies, the U.S. government, United Nations agencies, the private sector and NGOs to advance youth-led development policies and practice and to raise interest and investment for Restless Development’s global work. restlessdevelopment.org/usa
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All village bank members are women, and the training sessions that Friendship Bridge provides – from business and financial education to health and nutrition seminars – are geared toward meeting their needs. Health seminars, for example, might focus on dispelling misconceptions that can keep women from getting the right care. One common misconception in parts of rural Guatemala, is that if a woman is single, divorced or widowed, she doesn’t need a regular Pap smear test. This simple health screening, which can detect very early stage cancer cells on the cervix, has saved many thousands of lives around the world. In Guatemala, cervical cancer is the second most common cancer among women, and it certainly makes no distinctions in terms of the marital status of those it affects.
Steve Hollingworth, the 