SOCAP14,which took place on Sept 2-5 in San Francisco brought together over 2500 people (bold entrepreneurs, investors, philanthropists, bankers, as well as government officials) committed or interested to increase social return and impact. The movement continues accelerating: the convergence of the three worlds, private/public/social through new partnerships and collaborations, impact investment and the sharing economy mainstreaming, and the power of social media empowering individuals as well as organizations. There is so much going on and it is great that anyone can see the videos posted on youtube.
Some of my favourite speeches and panels this year include:
1)How is social funding changing the role of financial gatekeepers, for good by Danae Ringelmann, co-founder of Indiegogo.
2)Impact Uncensored, A conversation with Leila Janah, Founder and CEO of Samasource
3)Fast Pitches by Gratitude Awards Finalists
4)Multilingual Leadership=Ignition by Cathy Clarke, Jed Emerson and Ben Thornley. Here multilingual means being able to communicate and be effective across the three sectors: public, private and social.
5)Innovations in Social Finance by Judith Rodin, President of the Rockefeller Foundation
and last but not least….
6)When Life Gives you Lemons, Change the World! by the youngest speaker at SOCAP ever, 10 year old Vivienne Harr, Chief Inspiration Officer of Make a Stand

The 11th Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship took place on April 9-11. This year’s theme was Ambition: Fueling Opportunity, Scaling Progress. It is the 8th time that I had the opportunity to attend and it continues to be an amazing forum to learn, connect and share with people that are innovating new ways and creating partnerships to tackle and solve the world’s most pressing problems. This year’s Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship included organizations like B-Lab and Fundación Capital which are helping the convergence of the private sector with the social sector. Also a special Global Treasury award was given to Malala Yousafzai, the 16 year old Pakistan who survived the Taliban attack and has set up the Malala Fund dedicated to helping promote education for girls around the globe.

This month we have seen the death of a large microfinance institution BANEX (formerly Findesa), once the leading Nicaraguan MFI was forced into liquidation by the Nicaraguan Banking Superintendant (NBS) after defaulting on its creditors. Findesa was founded in 2002 had a spectacular growth and a remarkable track record til early 2008. They were granted the banking licence in September 2008 and changed its name to BANEX. The portfolio quality of Nicaraguan MFIs deteriorated very quickly in the past 2 years due to 1)the negative impact of the global financial crisis especially seen by the decline of remittances from Nicaraguans working in the USA, and 2) the “no pay movement” in the north and central parts of the country. Furthermore, Banex was hit by its product mix with high exposure to small and medium enterprises and high concentration in livestock loans. According to the national newspaper, NBS stated that all 3000 depositors of Banex were paid back in full. For more information please read David Roodman’s excellent writeup and the short note from Microrate
The good news. The long awaited IPO of SKS Microfinance took place and the shares made an impressive debut on the Bombay and National Stock Exchange of India on Aug 16th. The IPO was over 13 times subscribed and the shares closed the first day with an 11% premium. The valuations are much higher than Compartamos and the topic of MFIs going public is actively debated as industry players are divided in their views.

Last week as I updated the figures on 2 representative microfinance investment funds, 3 MFIs, and kiva, the online microlending site, I was very pleased and relieved to see that microfinance continues to attract funding despite the current crisis. Although it is a small sample these funds and entities were featured in my book “Kleiner Einsatz, grosse Wirking (small input, large impact)” that was published last April. As I plan to publish the English version soon I thought I shall update some figures. As to the assets managed by the two funds (Dexia Microcredit Fund managed by BlueOrchard Finance and responsAbility‘s Global Microfinance Fund) my text read “the assets of the two funds have ballooned between end of 2004 to Sept 2007. Dexia grew from USD 50 to 207mn and responsAbility’s fund from USD 8 mn to 159 mn” The corresponding figures for July 2009 are Dexia USD 502 mn and responsAbility USD 492 mn! The 3 MFI figures that I updated were: 1) Grameen Bank which had disbursed as of Sept 2007 loans totalling Taka 344 bn or USD 6.5bn. in June 2009, these figures were Taka 458 bn or USD 8.2 bn, 2) FINCA I updated the number of borrowers from 600,000 to 725,000, and 3) Banco Compartamos the figures for June 2007 – loan portfolio of Pesos 3.3 bn or USD 304 mn reaching 705,000 clients. The updated June 2009 figures are loan portfolio of Pesos 6.7 bn or USD 517 mn and reaching 1.3 mn clients. Lastly, Kiva, the online microlending site where anyone with an internet connection can support a microentrepreneur around the world starting with USD 25, continues to register phenomenal growth. In February 2008 Kiva had provided USD 21.5 mn worth of loans from 242,000 lenders. Only 18 months later as of August 2009 Kiva has distributed over USD 85.3 mn loans from 537,000 lenders.
It is a selected group of entities but the growth rates are amazing.

This story came to our attention through microcapital.
According to the press release of Variety.com, “Banker to the Poor” the best selling book on microfinance and the autobiography of the Nobel Laurete Prof.Muhammad Yunus will be adapted into an English feature film. Marco Amenta, an Italian director and producer is planning to start shooting in 2010 the film in Bangladesh where Prof. Yunus founded Grameen Bank, the bank that provides small loans to poor women for income generating activities.