Many Reasons to be Grateful

Message from the CEO

Every day, I feel thankful for the chance my team and I have to grow prosperity for low-income communities around the world.

We serve farming families living in some of the most difficult conditions imaginable — moms, dads, and grandparents raising kids, crops, livestock. We help foster the growth of agricultural businesses that organize and purchase the harvests of hundreds, often thousands, of local producers. We provide services to strengthen enterprises and help them custom fit to local realities. It’s a highly local thing, and I love that. 

Yet this Thanksgiving, I’m feeling even more grateful than usual for the global community that makes it all happen at Root Capital.

A few days ago, I got an email from afar that summed up many of the reasons for my gratitude...

Announcing the 2015 Crowdrise Giving Tower Challenge!

Today, we’re kicking off our participation in the 2015 Crowdrise Giving Tower Challenge. Your gift to Root Capital will create a ripple effect of impact — read more here, and join us today! 

Root Capital and Partners Featured in The Guardian

This recent article in The Guardian explores the financial and social benefits of investing in women and girls, and the still unmet financing needs of women entrepreneurs all over the world.

New and Noteworthy

• Earlier this month, Trillium Asset Management released a report, with inputs from Croatan Institute, Global Fund for Women, Thirty Percent Coalition and Root Capital, called Investing for Positive Impact on Women: Integrating Gender into Total Portfolio Activation.

• In his latest post on Forbes.com, CEO Willy Foote discusses three ways Root Capital and other social ventures can continue keeping clients front and center.

• For the last several years, many coffee farmers in Latin America have been supplementing their incomes by raising guinea pigs, fish and bees. Here's a look at how those diversification strategies have been helping farmers, their families and communities across Peru.

• Senior Vice President Catherine Gill was recently profiled in a post on Net Impact Boston’s website. Check out the Q&A with Catherine on the realities of impact investing here.

• Root Capital SVP Liam Brody was quoted in CNN’s recent article, Why is George Clooney betting on South Sudan for his coffee?

What We're Reading: Impact Investing

• Philanthropy’s New Frontier — Impact Investing, Stanford Social Innovation Review

• Social Impact Versus Financial Return? Threshing Out the Debate, Chris Isaac, AgDevCo

• Gates Foundation Gears Up to Blend Capital for Global Development, ImpactAlpha

What We're Reading: Agricultural Finance

• Howard Buffet Is Getting His Hands Dirty, Bloomberg

• Artisan Coffee Roasters Price Their Own Contracts, Financial Times

• Cocoa Rises to 4-Year High as El Niño Intensifies Supply Concern, Bloomberg

What We're Reading: Our Impact Focus Areas

• In The 'Cradle Of Cacao,' Chocolate Brigades Fight For A Bigger Harvest, NPR

• El Niño: Food Shortages, Floods, Disease and Droughts Set to Put Millions at Risk, The Guardian

• Innovation, Information and Shared Prosperity, Devex