Unitus

Unitus is a hybrid nonprofit organization: part venture capital firm, part strategy consulting firm and part investment bank. Headquartered in Redmond, Washington, with a regional office at the India Microfinance Center in Bangalore, India, Unitus is a global microfinance accelerator. Unitus works to fight global poverty by helping create large-scale, poverty-focused, and commercially sustainable microfinance institutions (MFIs).

Unitus is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization led by Mike Murray (Co-founder and Board Chair) and Geoff Davis (President and CEO). The Unitus Board of Directors is composed of business-minded professionals with expertise in finance, venture capital, strategy consulting and management. Thanks to a committed group of supporters who cover our 2006 operating costs, 100 percent of your contribution goes directly to our program work. All contributions are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.

In early 2000, a group of friends met to discuss how they could alleviate poverty, thus sowing the seeds that would later become Unitus. They discussed various economic development methodologies including education, microcredit and cooperatives. These initial discussions led to the formation of Unitus Action Groups, where individuals brought friends, family, co-workers or neighbors together to unite their efforts in fighting poverty (hence our name: “unite us” became “Unitus”). Much good came from these Unitus Action Groups. Sizable donations were made to worthy NGOs worldwide. But for all their successes, the founders were still not convinced that they were on the road to massive poverty alleviation.

In the context of this self-evaluation, they traveled to Bangladesh in January 2001 to learn about the Grameen Bank and meet with Muhammad Yunus, Grameen’s founder. The trip changed their lives and left them convinced that microcredit was the key to large-scale poverty alleviation. But a question still remained: With thousands of microfinance institutions (MFIs) already in existence, how could Unitus best leverage microcredit and microfinance? And could Unitus really reach scale quickly if it was constrained by building a field support organization from scratch? Wouldn’t it just be duplicating and overlapping efforts if it created an MFI of its own?

With some advice from Muhammad Yunus, they veered in a new direction and began to research the microfinance industry in-depth — its successes, failures, strengths, weaknesses and opportunities. After months of study and industry evaluation, a new strategy was developed for Unitus — one that could truly eliminate poverty for millions of people — the Unitus Acceleration Model. Many of those founding friends are still Unitus board members. They remain as committed as ever to alleviating worldwide poverty on a massive scale.

view more details : www.unitus.com

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