Smartphones aren't enough - Andrea Coleman on why Riders' 'last mile' transport services are essential

Andrea Coleman is co-founder and CEO of Riders for Health, a non-profit organization that manages and maintains vehicles for health-focused partners in Africa. Together with co-founder and husband, Barry Coleman, they saw that healthcare wasn’t reaching the people who needed it in remote communities. Well-maintained fleets of motorcycles and vehicles could be a game-changer to deliver healthcare in areas without any health infrastructure.

  

Read an in-depth interview with Andrea here.

Growing Social Innovation - VPF News (Jun 2013)

Click here to read the latest inspiring stories from VPF's portfolio of innovative social ventures, and update yourself of new members, initiatives and opportunities across the VPF network.

The Philanthropy Gene & Memes

In an earlier post I mused on Kevin Dutton’s ‘Wisdom of Psychopaths’ – test yourself here -  but recent efforts by VPF to engage with people in the venture capital and private equity world have made me wonder about the flipside, about Empathy and how that might manifest in philanthropic actions.

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Social finance: the money's there but the entrepreneurs are not

A lack of transformative ideas and returns makes the social finance landscape challenging. Investors should look beyond the commercial finance model and listen to social entrepreneurs. Mark Cheng makes a compelling case.

The disparity between what investors expect in terms of returns and what is needed to create social entrepreneurs who can deliver these returns (or at least get close to them) is increasingly recognised as an issue not addressed by current models. Mark provides ideas as to how to bridge this gap - VPF 100% supports the concept that sometimes it's grants that create investment opportunities.

Philanthropy: Why You Should Demand a ROI

Philanthropy is at its best when it is founded on entrepreneurial zest--think of social challenges as an opportunity to create large, profitable enterprises.

Philanthropy is not about giving money but about solving problems. While well-meaning, the idea of writing a check and calling it "philanthropy" is extremely short-sighted and unfortunately, extremely pervasive.

Instead, philanthropist should think like an entrepreneur and think of social challenges as an opportunity to create large enterprises. It’s really easy to create a $1 billion company--you just have to solve a $10 billion problem. Most of these large $10 to $100 billion problems happen to be social problems. That’s why I think that some of the largest opportunity exist for an entrepreneur in solving humanity’s grand challenges.

Article arguing that we need to think BIG...