I wish I had posted this closer to the announcement date, but I still think this will be helpful for people who care deeply about Unitus and microfinance/poverty alleviation…
I am a board member of Unitus, a global poverty 501c3 charity which recently announced that it is redirecting its efforts from microfinance to new areas of reducing global poverty. This came as a shock to many people who have valued the transformative work that Unitus has done to dramatically increase access to financial services for poor families.
False and Misleading Rumors
Unfortunately, false and misleading information about this announcement have become widespread. This is very disheartening because:
(a) The significant positive impacts Unitus has made on behalf of the global poor have been largely ignored, and
(b) Concern that Unitus’ announcement indicates that microfinance no longer requires innovative philanthropic support.
In an attempt to correct some of these misconceptions, I have re-stated some of the most common questions that I’ve been asked along with my thoughts that I shared in conversations with multiple people:
Q: What is Unitus’ mission? Vision? Approach?
Unitus’ mission is to help eliminate global poverty. Like Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus has said, we want poverty to be something future generations can see only in museums. From the start, we have been agnostic about methods. We are not about microcredit, profits, nonprofits, or any other methodology. We have searched for highly leveraged ways that we might uniquely contribute to empowering millions of poor working families with the opportunity for economic self-reliance. We are strong believers in identifying and accelerating the activities and approaches that most effectively reduce poverty and empower the working poor. We see market systems and capitalism as powerful tools that can and should be harnessed to bring opportunity and sustainability and global impact. We are committed to identifying high-impact projects with clearly defined and measurable goals. When we determine our work is done with a particular job, we will declare that we are done, then exit and pursue other worthy projects.
Q: What did Unitus announce?
With approximately $50 billion of microfinance capital now available to more than 150 million of the world’s working poor — and a large and a growing community of philanthropic and (now primarily) commercial microfinance institutions serving this previously greatly underserved market — we feel the time is right for Unitus to seek out other transformative fields of endeavor. Accordingly, going forward Unitus will no longer initiate new microfinance partnerships. We will honor all existing obligations and commitments to existing MFI partners, then move on to new high-value activities. Consequently, Unitus will be downsizing its operations to a small team as we identify new transformative projects to reduce poverty.
Q: What project has Unitus completed?
Our first project was focused on attracting commercial capital into the microfinance sector. When we first started on this project 10 years ago, almost all microfinance was funded by philanthropic capital. Less than 10 percent of the working poor had access to microfinance and growth was slow due to capital constraints and lack of innovation. Our vision was to identify entrepreneurs building the next generation of microfinance organizations in underserved and un-served markets and to support them in demonstrating the financial viability of commercial microfinance operations. The results of our endeavors have been beyond our imagination when we started. Our partners are now serving 12-plus million poor families, and represent some of the most innovative, efficient, fast-growing financial organizations on the planet. And many of them are passing on those efficiencies by regularly reducing interest rates paid on microloans by the working poor to levels never seen before. A recent IDB survey reported that “profit-making MFIs (charge) lower interest rates [than non-profit MFIs].” This is significant.
Therefore, Unitus is declaring “project accomplished” (which I think is a more accurate statement than the politically charged “mission accomplished” language.) We set out to accomplish a specific project — attracting commercial capital to the microfinance sector. There was broad agreement amongst Unitus staff and board (although not unanimous) that we had reached our demonstration effect goal. We looked extensively at (and actually experimented in a few) other geographies where we thought our consultative approach to accelerating access to high-density microcredit might apply and we concluded that the right situations did not exist for Unitus to have further transformational impact. Since our organization and structure was set up for this project, the board unanimously decided that the right decision was to: (a) wind down the existing microfinance accelerator organization; and (b) with a small team, begin new explorations for areas where we could start new projects that had similar transformative potential on global poverty.
Q: The announcement felt so abrupt. Why?
I think it felt abrupt because so many people care so much about Unitus and had expectations that Unitus had a long-term commitment to microfinance beyond our initial project commitment. It also felt abrupt because Unitus announced we were downsizing our staff size not due to funding issues or staff performance issues or other more common reasons that charities reduce their expenses. It also felt abrupt because Unitus staff members, with the board’s determination that the microfinance project was complete, were hard at work identifying new opportunities for Unitus projects. And it felt abrupt because the board chose to announce the changes soon after they were finalized, because we wanted to have sufficient resources to help impacted Unitus employees to find their next world-changing roles.
Q: Is innovative philanthropic capital still needed for microfinance?
Yes! There are many situations where there are still market failures or gaps in delivering financial services to poor families. In many cases, these will require strategically and innovatively targeted philanthropic resources to move things forward. There are also many good philanthropic microfinance organizations that have long-term commitments to improving the microfinance sector, so we believe there is greater need for our particular skills and contributions elsewhere.
Q: Will donations received before this announcement be allocated to microfinance or to new Unitus philanthropic activities?
All donations received prior to the announcement will by default be directed towards microfinance activities, including the completion of our existing microfinance commitments and the wind down of our microfinance operations. For donors who wish for their monies to be allocated towards new Unitus philanthropic activities, we will provide a mechanism for doing this. To be clear, 100 percent of donations to Unitus are and will be used exclusively for philanthropic purposes.
Q: How much money does Unitus have remaining?
Until we finalize fulfillment of all of our existing microfinance commitments and obligations, we will not have an exact number. We are taking the approach of being generous to fulfill not only the letter, but also the spirit of our commitments wherever feasible. Also, as noted above, we still need to have conversations with donors who may want remaining portions of their donations allocated to new Unitus philanthropic activities.
Q: Will Unitus be able to properly invest donor monies with a smaller staff?
Yes. There will continue to be sufficient professional staff to effectively allocate and invest donor resources into projects approved by the Unitus board.
Q: Did Unitus time this announcement because of the upcoming public offering of SKS Microfinance?
Absolutely not. Our timing was based entirely on the factors I outlined above: our desire to make a transformative difference in other fields of poverty alleviation, and within the context of our existing microfinance commitments, to be the best possible stewards of the financial and other resources with which we have been entrusted.
Q: Why can’t Unitus talk more about its involvement with SKS Microfinance?
Under India law, Unitus is considered a “promoter” for the SKS Microfinance public offering, and is restricted from any public commentary about SKS Microfinance during the quiet period before and after the public offering.
Q: Did (or will) Unitus board members personally benefit from Unitus Equity Funds?
Absolutely not. Some Unitus board members did provide investment capital for Unitus Equity Funds (a separate commercial social venture fund setup in 2006). These investments either came through: (a) family/community foundations; or (b) personal investments with a commitment for all proceeds to be used for charitable purposes. So, 100 percent of any financial returns to board member-related investments are committed to further charitable activities.
Q: What are the new philanthropic projects/activities for Unitus 2.0?
There are many significant areas of market failure which deny the working poor the opportunity to thrive and reach their dreams and potential. Traditional international development approaches have continued to fail to deliver results. We are currently researching systems, approaches and strategies where we believe there is the potential for transformative impact to create large-scale, sustainable opportunities to reduce global poverty. We will be announcing more details soon.
Unitus has published a follow-up FAQ.
If there are additional questions in which you think a larger audience may be interested, please post in comments.
Updates:
A new report highlighted by The Economist, reports that 3 out of 10 new workers in the next decade will be in India. That’s right, India. Not China. By 2020, India will add 110M new workers.
Researchers at the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative at the University of Oxford have created a new way of measuring poverty which takes into account more factors than income. Called the “Multidimensional Poverty Index”, it includes factors such as:
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