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In this episode we talk to Dr Farahnaz Karim, Founder & CEO of Insaan Group, about catalytic philanthropy, impact investing and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Including:
- What does Insaan Group do, and how did the organisation come about?
- What does the current impact investing market landscape look like? Where is the money coming from, and where is it going?
- How do we ensure that the focus on social, as well as financial, returns is maintained in impact investing?
- Is it appropriate to use philanthropic grant money as "first loss" capital to lower the risk of impact investments and make them more appealing?
- Has the emergence of impact investing increased the overall volume of resources aimed at social good, or is there a danger it is "cannibalising" money that might otherwise have been given as traditional donations?
- What is the role of government in relation to impact investing and philanthropy?
- Are social enterprise models a good way of developing trust in places where levels of trust in traditional philanthropy/NGOs are low?
- Can investment-type relationships be more empowering for those on the receiving end than gift-type relationships?
- Are the SDGs broadly focussed on the right things, or are there obvious gaps?
- Is the appeal of the SDGs partly pragmatic i.e. that even if they are not perfect, they represent a widely-understood and agreed framework for prioritisation and measurement?
- Is it a challenge for the SDGs that they are so huge in scale it can be difficult for individual organisations to relate them to their work?
- When it comes to impact measurement, do we need to balance quantitative data with qualitative data?
- Can technology play a role in making it easier to capture qualitative data?
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