When the economic downturn took hold last autumn, the management team at non-profit Kiva.org made a calculated bet to curb investment, anticipating that donors would slow the volume of small loans they make to entrepreneurs in the developing world. That slowdown never came. Now, the non-profit site is racing to keep up with user demand even while planning to bring its unique form of charity to the U.S.
The number of small business loans banks issue has cratered since the recession took root last year. Rebuilding that number is the focus of the small business provisions in the economic recovery bill that President Obama signed into law on Tuesday.
Most retired CEOs don't really retire. They serve on boards, teach at business schools, fund charities. Percy Barnevik's retirement plans are more ambitious: He intends to lift millions of people out of the world's deepest poverty.
A bank operating on a concept that has lifted thousands of people out of grinding poverty in the developing world has set its sights on helping the poverty-stricken in America.
Lovisa Asinde is a Ugandan widow who supports herself and her five children selling food. She started the small business eight years ago, and planned to open a larger restaurant in the center of her town.
When the economic downturn took hold last autumn, the management team at non-profit Kiva.org made a calculated bet to curb investment, anticipating that donors would slow the volume of small loans they make to entrepreneurs in the developing world. That slowdown never came. Now, the non-profit site is racing to keep up with user demand even while planning to bring its unique form of charity to the U.S.
The number of small business loans banks issue has cratered since the recession took root last year. Rebuilding that number is the focus of the small business provisions in the economic recovery bill that President Obama signed into law on Tuesday.
Most retired CEOs don't really retire. They serve on boards, teach at business schools, fund charities. Percy Barnevik's retirement plans are more ambitious: He intends to lift millions of people out of the world's deepest poverty.
A bank operating on a concept that has lifted thousands of people out of grinding poverty in the developing world has set its sights on helping the poverty-stricken in America.
Lovisa Asinde is a Ugandan widow who supports herself and her five children selling food. She started the small business eight years ago, and planned to open a larger restaurant in the center of her town.
Microfinance is one of the hottest topics in development, all the more so since Muhammad Yunus, the Bangladeshi pioneer of the practice, won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.
Every year for the last nine years, world business leaders and thinkers have gathered in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia's second largest city for the Jeddah Economic Forum.
Dear FSB: In my country, Tunisia, you can't get a bank loan unless you already own a business based in Tunisia. Where can I find financial help to get started?
Robert Duvall's heroes are Carmen Velasco and Lynne Patterson -- two women who are changing the lives of other women throughout Latin America one loan at a time.
Muhammad Yunus received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his pioneering work in microcredit, which has helped millions of people out of the poverty cycle. The first businessman ever to receive such a high honor, Yunus and the Grameen Bank he founded revolutionized conventional ways of banking, creating a system of lending money to the poor, mostly women.
[HIT] Hello kitschy. How do you make a splash in Japan's booming minicar market selling yet another tiny box with an engine a third the size of a Honda Civic's? If you're Nissan, you dub your car Pino (after Pinocchio) and pitch it to young women who can't resist upholstery embossed with stars and sparkly hubcaps "inspired by snowflake crystals." And that's just the start of the cute-sell: A Nissan website also lets the ladies accessorize with stuffed animals and heart-shaped decals and then e-share the sugary visuals with friends. The payoff: Since the car's launch in January, Nissan has been beating sales forecasts by 15 percent while pricing the Pino's base model 23 percent higher than the Suzuki Alto, the plain-Jane mini on whose platform the Pino is built.
When she turned 60, Dana Dakin was in a great place. The investment-marketing firm she'd founded 30 years earlier, Dakin Partners (dakinpartners.com), was so successful that it was turning away bus...
When Narisara Panya's husband died of AIDS seven years ago after returning to Thailand from a construction job abroad, it was devastating. With only a small plot of land that didn't always yield en...
On April 26, when the shareholders of French food giant Danone congregate in Paris for their annual meeting, they will have a unique proposal to consider: setting up a mutual fund to channel investment into Danone's nonprofit social ventures in developing countries.
CNN Connects: "India's Generation Next" examines the social, political and economic issues confronting young people across India, with distinguished panelists and a studio audience of about 100 young people. CNN Connects will be a joint production of CNN International and CNN-IBN -- airing on both networks in mid-March.
When Muhammad Yunus traveled to Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize earlier this month, he came prepared to fight for management control over a company he believes is sucking profits from the poo...
Along a dirt road in Bangladesh's green, fertile heartland, 140 miles northwest of Dhaka, workers in flip-flops are hauling bricks, pouring cement and hammering boards. The object of their labor: a...
The winner of this year's Nobel Peace Prize is Muhammad Yunus, founder of Bangladesh's Grameen Bank and a pioneer of microfinance. Grameen lends small sums to farmers and entrepreneurs. The idea is...
When Muhammad Yunus travels to Norway to receive the Nobel Peace Prize Dec. 10, he will come prepared to fight for management control over a company he believes is sucking profits from the poor of Bangladesh.
Forget billion-dollar development projects. When Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus surveyed a poor village in the mid-1970s and found that all the money borrowed totaled just $27, he set out to ...
It all started with $50. In 1988, that's what it took Noni Bala Ghosh to revive her family's business of making sweets to sell in Kholshi, her tiny village in Bangladesh.
Pierre Omidyar, 38, is one of the world's richest idealists. With stock in eBay worth $8.4 billion, the founder of the auction giant and his wife, Pam, are starting to give money away. In early Nov...
More and more people over 50 these days are starting at home businesses. Some are worried about the prospect of having enough in retirement, but others simply want to remain active.
Credit Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina with nerve. Even as her company's sales growth stalls and its stock rests near its 52-week low, she's thinking of more than just short-term fixes.
Sitting atop a bluff overlooking the Pacific, Scott Blum's house is a modernist fantasy that sticks out from the drab, conservative homes around it. Most of the other houses in Ritz Cove, a plush, ...
Cash-hungry entrepreneur joel Hensley wasn't about to let rejection grind him down. In early 1994, the 27-year-old owner of Market Street Coffee & Tea in Fresno, a three-employee store with annual ...
Small loans are often the toughest to get, because lenders consider the potential profit not worth the paperwork. Therefore, if you need between $100 and $25,000, you might turn instead to nonprofi...
Geneva Green is turning a hobby into a moneymaker. She now sells the silk flowers and dried-grass arrangements she makes in the housing project where she lives. She and other low-income entrepreneu...
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