Gumball Capital

On Saturday I attended the 4th Annual Craig's List Foundation Non-profit Boot Camp, on the campus of UC Berkeley. The best outcome of the day was discovering Gumball Capital, a microfinance social equity firm founded by students at Stanford earlier this year.

Microfinance involves giving modest loans to budding entrepreneurs in developing countries, who use the funds to grow their businesses.  97% of people who receive such a loan--who are not eligible for more traditional loans, due to lack of a credit history--repay it, after putting it to good use. Microfinance received a huge boost in cultural awareness last year, when Muhammad Yunus, the godfather of the movement, won the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Stanford students formed Gumball Capital to raise awareness and funds for microfinance on campus, and ended up winning Stanford's Entrepreneurship Week Challenge in March 2007.  To date, Gumball Capital has made loans to small businesspeople in 21 countries. They also support the work of established microfinance organizations.

With these achievements under their belts, Gumball is now sponsoring a well-organized nationwide challenge to enable college students across the country to fight global poverty.

Perhaps it is true that microfinance is a "flavor of the moment" in poverty reduction.  The loans certainly help the entrepreneurs who receive them, but do not fully address the underlying causes of widespread poverty.  Then again, every little bit helps--as long as we're careful not to oversell the benefits of microfinance, we should acknowledge its beneficial effects. 

On that note, bravo to the students of Gumball Capital for making such a positive difference.

Comments

[Gumball Capital]

Hello!

I'm Jae, Special Operations Director for Gumball Capital, and I just wanted to say thank you so much for featuring us on your blog! We're thrilled to receive the positive publicity, and have put a link to this page on our press page! We really appreciate the support, and while we realize we're not going to solve everything, we will, as you say, give every little bit that we can. Again, many thanks!

~Jae

[Marcus]

You're welcome Jae!