News from KL Felicitas Founders Charly and Lisa Kleissner
May 2018: KL Felicitas Foundation Impact Report
In Pursuit of Deep Impact and Market-Rate Returns: KL Felicitas Foundation’s Journey provides an in-depth analysis of the KLF impact investing portfolio and describes tools and processes that can help others improve and expand their impact investing.
Download the PDF.
April 2018
The KL Felicitas Foundation is proud to release an update of the Foundation’s Investment Policy.
Click here to read and download.
National Geographic
The KL Felicitas Foundation sponsored Fish 2.0, a competition where over 20 sustainable seafood start-ups pitched their enterprises last week at Stanford University.
Stanford Social Innovation Review
Lisa Kleissner authored a blog post for Stanford’s Social Innovation Review titled Creating a Better Future Through Transparency, about the need for more investors to share their impact performance data.
Business Week
Charly and Lisa Kleissner visit Healthpoint services.
Healthpoint Services is featured in Business Week as one of America’s Most Promising Social Entrepreneurs 2012.
India Trip Report
Charly and I returned from an eye opening trip to visit three of our Portfolio Entrepreneurs in India – Mann Deshi Mahila Bank, SABRAS, and Jaipur Rugs. All three are for profit social businesses that are successfully returning value to their investors while effecting measurable social change.
What struck us most about our visit were the similarities we saw between each of the founders. All three have a deep passion for the people they work with – they communicate deep gratitude and respect for their employees and customers. All were inspired by the belief that every person deserves a life of dignity.
Two of the enterprises – SABRAS and Jaipur Rugs – have figured out how to reduce intermediaries, improve working conditions, and raise the standard of living for marginalized producers.
Mann Deshi Mahila Sahakari Bank, Ltd. is the first all women owned and run cooperative bank in India. Founded by lower caste women who pooled their savings, the bank currently has 127,000 customers. To ensure the success of their loan program, they require all borrowers to enroll in their business school. Programs are tailored for the under educated successfully utilizing self developed learning tools for the illiterate.
SABRAS is one business line of three under the holding company of SAVE. All are designed to help salt producers who, without intervention, would only earn 60 cents per day. These interventions enable the producers to double or triple their income. And all three are for profit businesses paying dividends to their investors.
And lastly, Jaipur Rugs has created a powerful sales and marketing channel for hand loomed carpets providing increased income, health and educational services to marginalized women weavers in rural India.