Published inMercy Corps Ventures·Feb 18, 2021What is resilience? MCV’s impact and fails of 2020Tour the report: mercycorps.org/MCVimpact2020 RESILIENCE. The events of 2020 and the resulting changes to how we work, live and interact with each other were understandably accompanied by a great degree of anxiety and uncertainty. It was a profound year that made many of us redefine success and question our fundamental…Socent1 min readSocent1 min read
Published inFinX.vc·Oct 15, 2020Introducing FinXUniversal Financial Inclusion in the 21st Century By: The Mercy Corps Ventures Team We’re living in a unique moment in history when transformative financial technologies have the potential to create revolutionary new pathways for people to spend, save, send, and secure money. At Mercy Corps, we understand how quickly and powerfully digital technology can transform the lives…Fintech7 min readFintech7 min read
Published inMercy Corps Ventures·Oct 11, 2020The Team Behind Mercy Corps VenturesWe believe entrepreneurs developing bold solutions to the world’s toughest challenges can accelerate the path to end poverty and protect the planet. And we designed Mercy Corps Ventures to meet the unique needs of early-stage entrepreneurs operating in frontier markets. …6 min read6 min read
Published inMercy Corps Ventures·Oct 17, 2019Grit in Action: Mercy Corps Ventures 2019 Annual ReportDownload the Report (in case you’re in a rush) G R I T . Grit is what it takes to move from idea to market. To export coffee from a country in crisis when larger players could not. To make a basic phone as valuable as a smartphone. And to…Startup2 min readStartup2 min read
Published inMercy Corps Ventures·Oct 1, 2019Is Diversity, Equity and Inclusion a Must?Content for this blog is taken from the Scaling Pathways series, a knowledge partnership between USAID, the Skoll Foundation, Mercy Corps Ventures and the CASE at Duke University. An increasing body of research, including that from McKinsey & Co. and Boston Consulting Group, shows that diversity in teams is correlated…Diversity2 min readDiversity2 min read
Published inMercy Corps Ventures·Jul 9, 2019Supply Chains in Peril: Can we align incentives for collective sustainability?By: Amanda West and Hetal Patel This piece was originally written for The Purposeful Collaboration Issue of Business Fights Poverty Magazine (https://snipbfp.org/Issue2) to frame a conversation with Bayer, Nestle, AB Sugar and others at Business Fights Poverty Oxford 2019. We will follow up this post with outputs from the conversation. …Sustainability4 min readSustainability4 min read
Published inMercy Corps Ventures·Mar 7, 2019Customers are like onionsIf I could go back to my time as an entrepreneur, I would do a lot of things differently to build my social venture better and faster. (It’s kind of ridiculous how many things, actually). A lot of these reflections have come up for me since I took a seat…Impact Investing4 min readImpact Investing4 min read
Published inMercy Corps Ventures·Jan 22, 2019Why We (and a cohort of entrepreneurs) Invested: Vega CoffeeWritten by: Timothy Rann with support from Amanda West and Village Capital Entrepreneurs and investors don’t always see eye to eye. They often assess businesses and prioritize actions differently. But, in the past year a social venture in the coffee sector was selected for investment both by an institutional investor…Coffee7 min readCoffee7 min read
Published inMercy Corps Ventures·Jan 22, 2019Fails, Exits and Impact: SVF’s 2018 Annual ReportDownload the report (in case you’re in a rush) When Mercy Corps launched the Social Venture Fund (SVF), it was an experiment — an experiment to see whether an INGO could play a role in impact investing and use its global resources to help entrepreneurs scale their ventures smarter and…Startup2 min readStartup2 min read
Published inMercy Corps Ventures·Dec 12, 2017Introducing the Social Venture Fund’s first Impact ReportDownload the Report (in case you’re in a rush) “The secret of getting ahead is getting started.” — Mark Twain While we ourselves still feel like a startup enterprise, we now reflect on the first two years of building Mercy Corps’ Social Venture Fund (SVF). Of course, had we waited…Impact Investing2 min readImpact Investing2 min read
