Skoll Foundation Program Office Kimberly Dasher Tripp and Teach for America-Bay Area Managing Director Chantal Laurie Below, co-author a piece in the Fall 2010 issue of the Stanford Social Innovation Review titled “Freeing the Social Entreprenuer”. It’s a roadmap for social entrepreneurs when they are building their leadership teams at that critical juncture between running a startup [...]

Congratulations to Root Capital for achieving a truly remarkable milestone this summer — it awarded its 800th loan and reached a total of $200 million in disbursements. This reflects a 44 percent annual growth rate. These loans, provided to small and growing businesses across 30 countries in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa, have positively impacted the lives of [...]

Root Capital, led by 2005 Skoll social entrepreneur Willy Foote, just received a big shot in the arm for its work with $14 million in funding from the Gates Foundation. Root focuses on what Willy calls the “missing middle”, organizations too small for traditional commercial loans and too big for microfinance.  Skoll has worked closely [...]

The Office of the Third Sector in the United Kingdom has just co-published with NESTA and Social Enterprise Magazine Good Deals 2009: A Social Investment Almanack (PDF).  Per the Third Sector Minister, Angela Smith, “This is an unprecedented collection of think pieces and case studies that aims to build knowledge and inspiration among those operating [...]

The Skoll family will be well represented at the Social Capital Markets 2009 conference in San Francisco next week.  Dan Crisafulli, who heads up ecosystem investments and partnerships at the Skoll Foundation, will be speaking on a panel on forecasting markets, essentially blue-sky thinking about the future of social capital markets - trends to watch [...]

Root Capital, founded by 2005 Skoll social entrepreneur William Foote, has just landed a 2009 FT Sustainable Banking Award.  The FT Sustainable Banking Awards, now in their fourth year, are an initiative by the Financial Times and the International Finance Corporation to recognize institutions that have shows “leadership and innovation in integrating social, environmental and [...]

Check out Starbucks.com today.  On the home page, they are playing a shortened version of the Skoll Foundation Uncommon Heroes video that focuses on Root Capital’s work with coffee growers in Tanzania.  This short film debuted at the Skoll World Forum this year.  Starbucks plans to run the full 8-minute short film in its stores, [...]

Willy Foot, the CEO of Root Capital and a 2005 Skoll social entrepreneur, just sent around a message outlining some of Root’s high level numbers for 2008.  At a time when the traditional financial sector was essentially in free fall, Root Capital was growing its business.  Some of the highlights in Willy’s communication are listed [...]

The second day of the Social Capital Market Conference in San Francisco offered a smorgasbord of options for folks interested in finance in the social sector.  With ten parallel session tracks, there was almost too much choice.  Katherine Fulton of the Monitor Institute kicked the day off with a thought-provoking keynote.  She argued that social [...]

Yesterday was day one of the Social Capital Markets conference in San Francisco - SOCAP ‘08.  They were anticipating around 300 attendees and, instead, got double that.  While the number made for some tight sessions, it’s a powerful sign of interest in the space.  The subtitle of the conference gives the basic focus:  “the intersection [...]