Published: Tuesday, July 20, 2010
IN OUR VIEW / HELPING OTHERS HELP THEMSELVES
Philanthropy gets creative
Two recent items from the "teach a man to fish and you feed him for lifetime" file caught our attention. We raise our morning beverage in a toast to:
Global Partnerships, a Seattle-based nonprofit that has successfully melded philanthropy and investment returns to create life-changing opportunities.
It announced last week that a $2 million fund it launched five years ago, one that puts private capital into socially-focused microfinance institutions in Latin America, had repaid all investors on time or early, with interest.
Microfinance is a tool aimed at pulling people and communities out of poverty by making very small loans, usually to the self-employed so they can build a sustainable small business. Its many success stories are remarkable and inspiring, but most were fueled by public and private donations.
With such gifts drying up in a weak economy, Global Partnerships' model is pumping fresh hope into some of the world's most destitute communities. By adding a modest, fixed financial return to socially-motivated investors' desire to make the world a better place, it creates a more stable funding source for institutions that make microloans.
Global Partnerships has built a reputation for doing its homework and investing in high-performing institutions, ones that also seek to tie improvements in health-care delivery or other social gains to their lending programs.
It currently has funds with $39 million invested in microfinance institutions in Latin America.
One of its Puget Sound investors, Jeff Keenan, said GP is "demonstrating that doing well and doing good are not mutually exclusive."
Everybody wins -- especially those who take the hand up and step out of poverty.
Closer to home, 16 low-income students will graduate next week from a two-quarter program at Everett Community College that taught them property-management skills. That's 16 local students whose job prospects have improved considerably, thanks to a collaboration by Housing Hope, Coast Real Estate Services and EvCC.
The hands-on program, which includes a 200-hour internship, prepares students for jobs as leasing agents, on-site property managers and maintenance workers for apartment complexes and commercial buildings.
For Housing Hope, it's just one more example of how the nonprofit goes well beyond its basic mission of filling low-income housing needs. It also provides a long list of services designed to help its clients improve their life and job skills.
For Coast Real Estate, which provided instructors for the program, it's an example of a local business investing in the future of its community, in a way that serves its own industry's future, too.
Again, everybody wins -- especially if others are inspired to their own good works.
It announced last week that a $2 million fund it launched five years ago, one that puts private capital into socially-focused microfinance institutions in Latin America, had repaid all investors on time or early, with interest.
Microfinance is a tool aimed at pulling people and communities out of poverty by making very small loans, usually to the self-employed so they can build a sustainable small business. Its many success stories are remarkable and inspiring, but most were fueled by public and private donations.
With such gifts drying up in a weak economy, Global Partnerships' model is pumping fresh hope into some of the world's most destitute communities. By adding a modest, fixed financial return to socially-motivated investors' desire to make the world a better place, it creates a more stable funding source for institutions that make microloans.
Global Partnerships has built a reputation for doing its homework and investing in high-performing institutions, ones that also seek to tie improvements in health-care delivery or other social gains to their lending programs.
It currently has funds with $39 million invested in microfinance institutions in Latin America.
One of its Puget Sound investors, Jeff Keenan, said GP is "demonstrating that doing well and doing good are not mutually exclusive."
Everybody wins -- especially those who take the hand up and step out of poverty.
The hands-on program, which includes a 200-hour internship, prepares students for jobs as leasing agents, on-site property managers and maintenance workers for apartment complexes and commercial buildings.
For Housing Hope, it's just one more example of how the nonprofit goes well beyond its basic mission of filling low-income housing needs. It also provides a long list of services designed to help its clients improve their life and job skills.
For Coast Real Estate, which provided instructors for the program, it's an example of a local business investing in the future of its community, in a way that serves its own industry's future, too.
Again, everybody wins -- especially if others are inspired to their own good works.
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