Philanthropy

Giving Money BACK to Donors

Giving Money BACK to Donors

Upaya has done something novel in the past few weeks – novel for us, at least – we’ve written checks to our donors… and it feels great. After 11 years of working on and fine-tuning our model, recoverable grant donors are getting funds returned to them because the investment that we made has returned capital to us. While this is good news for the donors, I believe that it is a critical inflection point not only for Upaya but as a bridge between the nonprofit sector and a more sustainable for-profit world. Let me explain what I mean.

Alignment: Using Your Values to Invest in Social Change | A webinar series with Oiko Credit

Upaya CEO, Kate Cochran, joined Oikocredit CEO, Matt Eldridge and COO, Sara Shoff, to discuss how to use your values to invest in social change. Kate shared how she got into the impact investing space and what she believes is the secret to Upaya’s success since its founding 10 years ago.

The webinar premiered on Wednesday, July 28 and is available to watch on YouTube.

Pioneering Capital Must Feed the Growth of the Impact Economy

Pioneering Capital Must Feed the Growth of the Impact Economy

In our collective quest to grow the impact economy, we should not lose sight of the full set of actors, tools, and methods that are needed in concert to effect disruptive change. Namely, we must not overlook the earliest stages of social enterprise innovation, the so-called “Pioneer Gap” that still remains stubbornly under-funded.