Charity of the week: Acumen Fund

Acumen Fund (acumenfund.org) seeks to improve the lives of the world’s poor by investing in groundbreaking social enterprises and ideas. Founded in 2001, the organization provides investments, not grants, to entrepreneurs who aim to bring affordable basic services to the developing world. The fund deploys what it calls “patient capital,” or long-term investments, to enterprises that deliver quality health care, safe water, and affordable alternative energy to millions of poor consumers. Its investments include a company that uses rice husks to fuel village power plants in India and another that produces insecticide-treated wall linings to curtail the transmission of malaria. Over the past decade, the fund has invested more than $75 million in 69 enterprises throughout Africa as well as in India and Pakistan.

Each charity we feature has earned a four-star overall rating from Charity Navigator, which ranks not-for-profit organizations on the strength of their finances, their control of administrative and fund-raising expenses, and the transparency of their operations. Four stars is the group’s highest ranking.

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