Community Development Innovation Review

When Calvert Social Investment Foundation launched its current programs in 1995, with the mission of helping to end poverty through investment, we began our first foray into investing in microfinance. Through our increasing involvement in the international impact investing industry, we have seen a true scaling of targeted investments to the microfinance sector.

As the world grapples with growing income disparities that leave more than three billion of the planet’s people in poverty, and as the current recession shrinks the pool of public and private resources available to remedy the situation, investors and policymakers across the globe are seeking high-impact, cost-effective strategies and tools to reduce the cavernous income and wealth gap and create bridges out of poverty.

In September 2010, the United Kingdom government partnered with Social Finance, Ltd. to break new ground in financing for the nonprofit sector with its pilot program to reduce recidivism in the Peterborough prison. Dubbed the “Social Impact Bond,” or SIB for short, the instrument links private capital to the success of social programs.

This article analyzes the best evaluation methods in international development, including examples of evaluation toolkits, with the aim of helping community development practitioners apply the methods to projects in the United States.

The truth is that banks and other financial service providers haven’t done nearly enough to help the poor. The good news is that this is beginning to change—and we have the world’s mobile network operators to thank.

Populist ire that arose from the credit crunch is being directed at banks from all corners of the globe, triggering a series of new laws and schemas, whose combined effect will be to impose on banks greater government control over their economics (more regulation on safety and soundness) and greater government interest in their social outcomes (inclusive banking).

When I speak of a Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) for Latin America, I mean a mechanism that monitors and makes bank activities public.

The Xi’an branch of the People’s Bank of China reached out to the Federal Reserve Banks of Boston and San Francisco to learn more and engage in a dialogue about how CRA might be applied in China. The discussion was a study in contrast, but also uncovered some surprising areas of commonality.

The measurement of nonfinancial performance is becoming increasingly important in the community impact investing industry, where individuals and institutions actively deploy capital in low-income domestic markets for both financial and social returns.

In this issue of the Review, we explore the intersection of community development and health. Specifically, authors offer varying perspectives on how to “bend the health cost curve” using innovative community development strategies and how to positively affect social determinants of health to generate better health outcomes for low-income people.