Echoing Green is an angel investor for entrepreneurs focused on social change. I wrote about a couple of their 2007 fellows earlier this summer. They provide seed funding and support to entrepreneurs with innovative ideas for social change.

As an angel investor in the social sector, Echoing Green identifies, funds, and supports emerging leaders around the world and the organizations that they launch. Echoing Green has a two-year fellowship program, in which they identify social entrepreneurs that develop new solutions to social problems. They are currently accepting applications for the 2008 fellowship, for which 20 social entrepreneurs will be selected. Fellows will receive up to $90,000 to fund sustainable solutions to social problems.

I'd like to encourage our readers to make a contribution on innovative social change by applying to the fellowship and contributing with their groundbreaking ideas. As Jeremy Schifeling from Echoing Green says

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In case you haven't heard, there's this new thing called MicroPlace. It's a major turn in the life of the microfinance movement founded by entrepreneur (philanthropreneur?) Tracey Pettengill Turner. In between advancing her vision for solutions to poverty and running Ironman triathlons, Tracey takes a moment to discuss her new project with NextBillion.net.

 

I know you have probably heard enough of MicroPlace being compared to P2P lenders like a certain four-letter organization that starts with a "K." Still, I have to ask: How do you address the concern that the MicroPlace securities model creates one more intermediary between borrowers and their much needed microloans? What is the advantage of the securities model over P2P that outweighs this extra middleman?

Actually, there will be the same number of players in either model. As we grow,

MicroPlace will offer investments in diversified microfinance funds and in specific microfinance institutions. Investors can choose depending on how diversified a portfolio is desired. The real differences between our marketplace and P2P services lay elsewhere. In setting out to create MicroPlace, I spent a lot of time thinking about the emerging P2P businesses and came to the following conclusions:

- I think that it is about treating the working poor with dignity; not as problems, but as opportunities; not as charity cases, but as equals. Investing in the working poor (and earning a return on your investment like you would any other investment) honors them as the business people they are. At MicroPlace, we spent 2 years building the infrastructure-It's about investing. The magic of microfinance (by becoming a registered broker-dealer) necessary for everyday people to invest and earn a return.

- It's about scaling. How do we go from reaching 100 million people to reaching a billion people? We need out-of-the-box thinking that enables us to grow the industry in a step-function way. Access to capital is one part of the equation and MicroPlace enables people to invest as much as they like without limitation (of course within regulations).

-It's about sustainability. Microfinance won't succeed unless we build it in a sustainable way, which means everyone needs to earn a return from the investor in Indianapolis to the borrower in Bangladesh. Charity dollars are just not enough, even if every single charity dollar was given to microfinance organizations. We need people to start thinking about microfinance with their investment wallets, not their charitable wallets. Then we'll really see the power of microfinance!

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It is often the case that business models touch but rarely elaborate on the aspirational value of many products offered for the first time at the BOP level and the subconscious consequences they have on BOP consumers. I recently read, with a touch of sadness, a short article published in the Sunday Times on September 30th called: "Book now for the flight to nowhere."

In this article the author talks about an old airplane, an Airbus 300, in Delhi. This airplane never actually takes off. But it offers the service of helping passengers imagine how it would be to take a flight. The plane only has one wing and is missing part of its tail. Meals are served with a trolley cart, and a generator powers the air-conditioning.

The plane simulates its flight every Saturday. Irrespective of the veracity of this story, it points to an acute unmet need at the BOP: the need for consumers to believe there is something more out there worth aspiring for and worth fighting for.(Click "Read More" to continue reading this post)