Wow! We could not have said it better – “So if you want to put your money in microfinance just to feel good, by all means direct it to the organization that most pulls your heartstrings. But if your objective is to roll back poverty and change the world, don’t believe those [...]

A lot of discussion has circulated recently as to whether microfinance should be done in the traditional donor-driven, non-profit model -or- through the investor-driven, for-profit model. If our goal is to extend credit and banking services to the poor around the world by giving them a hand-up rather than a hand-out, who would do it [...]

“In 2010 the need for microfinance will soar –a segment in which demand, according to some estimates, is already ten times greater than supply.”
Stephen Green, Chairman of HSBC Bank, The Economist, Dec 2009

A Microfinance Institution (MFI) is an organization that offers financial services to people who typically do not receive services from traditional banks. As most of them are poor and have no collateral -except their own labor-they are normally excluded from the regular banking system.

The following is a letter I recently wrote to Bill and Melinda Gates in response to their “call to action” to the world’s Billionaires to give away half their fortunes:
Dear Bill and Melinda, I have enjoyed watching your efforts (along with Warren Buffet’s) over the past year to inspire the “Billionaires [...]

We began GMP with the simple vision of helping the poor around the world help themselves. In much the same way the “green movement” swept America in the mid-2000’s, we believe the “microfinance movement” is next in corporate and church culture as Americans see that helping the poor is far more [...]