Entries tagged with social enterprise

An interview with Tara Murphy Forde, Senior Vice President, Research & Impact, Global Partnerships

Global Partnerships (GP) is an impact-first investor dedicated to expanding opportunity for people living in poverty. At GP, we create and manage funds that make loans and early stage investments in social enterprises that serve people living in poverty throughout Latin America, the Caribbean, and sub-Saharan Africa. Five years ago, we spun out our Research and Impact Team to strategically define, measure, and strengthen the impact of our investments. As part of this effort, we developed a poverty measurement methodology that helps us understand whether our investments are reaching those we aim to serve.

Today we use poverty data to screen, select, and monitor the outreach of our social enterprise partners and our analysis informs our investment decisions; not only whether to invest, but on what terms. We continue to iterate and strengthen our approach, but there have been some key steps and learnings along the way, which I will attempt to distill here in the event they are of service to others embarking on a similar pursuit.