(Above: Owners of Alimentos NutriNaturales, in El Petén, Guatemala. The company makes products from the native Ramon nut. The company participated in TechnoServe’s national business plan competition in 2007 and was awarded $10,000 in seed capital that helped launch the business).

Simon Winter: First of all, we should be specific about whose access we are talking about here. Among the most challenged small and growing businesses (SGB) that will have a significant impact on poverty in developing countries are those comprised of farmers organized into business groups and entrepreneurs trying to build businesses in high-risk sectors, such as agro-processing. If you are a larger agribusiness multinational, you can get finance relatively easily for activities in emerging markets. Or, likewise, if you are a private individual, who is middle class and has assets, and you want to invest in higher growth sectors with relatively predictable cash flows, like telecommunications, you also can get finance relatively easily.

Welcome to my world, where at least once a week, I have a conversation with a promising, early stage social entrepreneur.  Good idea addressing a major problem?  Check.  Innovative, business-driven approach?  Check.  Exhausted the small list of impact investors and patient capitalists, without having raised a dime?  Too often, also check.

There are some early stage funders out there.  Changemakers is a fantastic platform that offers money but more importantly, exposure.  The Gray Ghost Ventures family includes First Light Ventures, which offers promising early-stage companies up to $100,000 in investment.

Now you can add Innocentive, which we first discussed a year ago.  They are running a prize-based innovation fund, and their latest challenge specifically seeks "novel, unorthodox, and extraordinary opportunities for philanthropic investment."

For all of the presenters in the session on "International Social Enterprise - Operational and Implementation Challenges," successful partnerships, especially within the communities they sought to serve, acted as the litmus test for the overall success of the enterprise. Realizing the importance of cross-sector collaboration is one thing, but what are the methods for creating an effective partnership? How do you combine potentially different value propositions under one effort? And, what are the practical skills you can use to approach partnering across segments of society?

Today I'm introducing a few changes in the format of this Friday Roundup. In addition to a short post about and links to noteworthy news in the social enterprise space, I'll include three sections that may help you stay up to date with what's being said on NextBillion (the last few weeks have averaged 2-3 posts per day... that's a lot to keep up with).

The first new section, In Case You Missed It, is a list of what was published on NextBillion on the corresponding week. The second one, Make Sure You Don't Miss It, will include relevant events and opportunities you should be aware of (if you know of anything that should be on this list, please do email me. I'll appreciate it.) The third one,NextBillion Archives, will include older NextBillion posts on topics relevant to the week's whenever possible. There's so much good content hidden inthe archives of this site, we thought it would be great to undust some of it. Hat tip to Bryan for bringing up the idea just recently. 

OK, fair enough, but still anecdotal. Can we really believe the hype on mobile banking actually reaching the BoP? Just a few days before Friedman's column, Mark Pickens, Microfinance Analyst who heads up CGAP's Technology Program's work with customers and agent business models, blogged Branchless Banking 2010: Is the hype justified?Pickens seemed to be presciently responding to Friedman, writing: "Just because we are excited about branchless banking doesn't mean it is living up to the promises we make on its behalf."

An innovative partnership has just been announced at the mHealth Summit in Washington DC. Procter and Gamble and Healthpoint Services will join forces under a learning partnership aimed at advancing an innovative model that delivers clean drinking water and quality healthcare services to rural communities in India, with potential to scale around the world. 

Healthpoint Services is led by Ashoka Senior Entrepreneur Al Hammond. It provides rural communities with access to four basic services: clean drinking water, access to qualified doctors via telemedicine supported by two-way video and electronic medical records; advanced on-site diagnostic capability (over 80 tests), enabling evidence-based healthcare; and high-quality medicines via an on-site licensed pharmacy.

It's an open secret that microlending collection practices can exploit local customs and traditions to a jarring degree; check out anthropologist Lamia Karim's scathing indictment of microloan collection practices in Bangladesh. Recently headlines in Western media started to shed light on this gruesome underlying story. In what some see as a calculated political move considering the August IPO of SKS Microfinance, India's largest microlender, as a response to reports of intimidation and ruthless debt collection tactics, the Andhra Pradesh provincial government put forth an ordinance essentially urging debtors to stop repaying their loans.

Down went SKS' share price. Up went speculation about the future of microfinance.

Passionate yet very reasonable defenders of microfinance, like the Center for Financial Inclusion's Beth Rhyne, rose up to make the case that microfinance remains a pillar of progress for the world's poor. If that is true, then microlenders now have great incentive to reach out private sector organizations that exist to represent businesses, including microlenders, as a community in governance: independent, membership-driven chambers of commerce or business associations.

The first impact session I attended, The Role of Impact Investing in Social and Environmental Change, discussed the significance of investing for impact and new trends in the field. John Goldstein ofImprint Capital Advisors, the moderator, started the session by acknowledging that impact investing applies to a wide range of asset classes and missionaries. Each panelist then shared their interest in current innovations occurring as a result of impact investing. Bill Marvel from Baldwin Brothers, which started as a hedge fund, is interested in new enterprise and investment strategies, while Art Stevens from the Calvert Foundation is focused on ways to use impact investing to create more effective vehicles to enable participation and channel capital, whereas Rob Whittier of Deloitte is involved in building industry infrastructure though standards and metrics. Whittier, who works with IRIS, highlighted that one of the goals of IRIS is to unlock trillions of dollars to invest in such ventures. I was also pleased to hear Rob cite a malaria example to describe the type of metrics IRIS uses that I often use to describe the differences between outputs and outcomes (i.e. an output would be the number of malaria nets distributed, whereas an outcome would be the change in malaria incidence due to the malaria nets). He also clarified that IRIS is focusing on standardizing output metrics first. To which Stevens later added that "outputs are okay ... We need outcomes, (to answer the question) are we changing people's lives. (We) need to ramp up measurement." He continued by saying we need to collect enough data to know what our impact is, but not be buried in measurement; a line that the impact investing field is carefully assessing now.

In a recent interview, Dr. Sebisaho articulated three goals that Amani Global Workshoped to accomplish during the team's three-week trip to Idjwi. First and foremost, Dr. Sebisaho wanted to get the Idjwi community behind the organization's plan to erect a main hospital and satellite health clinics. After all, if the community rejects the unfamiliar availability of healthcare, after laying the future hospital foundation and stocking its shelves with supplies, its halls would remain empty, vaccinations would remain unused, and all efforts would be rendered futile. As Dr. Sebisaho puts it, the organization's success is contingent on confirming that Amani is "not going against the flow." Secondly, Amani hoped to mollify any potential racial or political tensions that could result in an isolated island's sudden exposure to technology, never before seen races and unfamiliar practices. A third and crucial goal was to return to New York with a concrete plan the citizens of Idjwi will embrace and that Amani can support.