Aden Van Noppen is a senior at Brown University where she studies 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

Government and non-government investors in private sector development are both redefining poverty alleviation, but this compelling panel demonstrated some key differences between the two players. NextBillion’s own Rob Katz moderated the panel.  Representing the social venture capital side of the equation was his colleague at Acumen Fund, Sasha Dichter, and Stuart Davidson, Managing Partner at Labrador Ventures.  On the government side were Rob Schneider from the Global Development Alliance of USAID and Jim Polan from the SME Finance Department of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC).

It was clear from the panel that the government and non-government players have different strengths and weaknesses, causing them to play unique roles in enterprise development, but perhaps also limiting their ability to collaborate. Even though we are seeing more public-private partnerships on the ground, the government and non-government investors work under very different constraints and have different priorities. For example, USAID and OPIC expressed that they are limited by government mandates, yet they have a wide geographical reach and historical significance. Acumen Fund and Labrador said that they generally have strong expertise and relative flexibility, yet they are much smaller in size and scope. According to the panelists, these differences seem to translate into little collaboration between the two types of investors.

(This post continues past the break; click "Read More" to continue)

Guest blogger Graham Macmillan is the Senior Director of VisionSpring (formerly Scojo Foundation). In addition to his work with the VisionSpring team, Graham is pursuing his Global EMBA as part of TRIUM, which is a joint program of London School of Economics, HEC Paris, and NYU Stern. He also holds his MSc in International Management from NYU Wagner and his BA in International Studies and History from Colby College.

By Graham Macmillan

Is private equity really making a play in this space? If so, what’s their impact going to be? Those were the questions I asked myself as I sat down at the session "New Private Equity Funds' at SoCap08. The session’s description piqued my interest enough to choose it over the many other concurrent sessions. I wanted to learn more about the "serious money" being invested in non-microfinance related social enterprises. Well, I am happy to report that I found some good examples, though I left with some lingering questions.

The session’s Moderator, Scott Smith of Hanson Bridgett, did an effective job of facilitating the discussion among Álvaro Rodríguez Arregui of Ignia Partners, Wes Selke of Good Capital, Christian Schattenmann of Bamboo Finance, and Josh Becker of New Cycle Capital. For someone that doesn’t spend the majority of his time talking with investors expecting a financial return, I was interested in seeing what the investments in the funds were and what, most importantly, were the expected returns—both financial as well as social. Here is a quick listing of the funds, some of the investments the funds have made, and the expected returns:

(This post continues past the break; click "Read More" to continue)

The final day of last week's SoCap event was, for me, the best of the 3 days.  It was the chance to meet with lots of other participants, hear their ideas, and get actively involved in the things that I really cared about and wanted to discuss.  The "strategically unstructured" format of the day was SoCap’s way to take the informal discussions of the hallways and expand on them.  It was also the place to find the people that were in the sessions on Monday and Tuesday who you never found the time to have a chat with.

I attended only 2 sessions that day, the first on franchising as a tool for scale and the second on China and development, but I actually spent the entire day on-site chatting with new found friends, old-found friends, and a whole host of compelling ideas.  The franchising talk brought together seasoned members of the community from organizations like VisionSpring one of the early adopters of microfranchising, and those that were just starting to look at franchising such as Rubicon. 

I also learned of a really interesting mobile medical initiative in the US that was considering franchising ambulance services in the Midwest and had the chance to share some of the key findings from my own microfranchising research.

(This post continues past the break; click "Read More" to continue)