You’re a busy entrepreneur with an innovative venture that is making a real impact. But like many impact entrepreneurs you likely face questions and challenges in the capital-raising process. Many get the wrong kind of capital at the wrong time. The wrong capital for your business is “dumb money” – it can keep you and your impact enterprise from reaching your goals.

Here at CASE we’re excited to announce that we’re crafting a series of online learning modules for such impact entrepreneurs wanting to avoid the common pitfalls on the road to raising capital that’s smart for their business growth. We are also allowing impact ventures, impact investors, and intermediaries to register for access to our exclusive beta test of Smart Impact Capital modules.

Through interviews with hundreds of investors and entrepreneurs and lessons learned with the Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator at Duke (SEAD)’s entrepreneurs, who have collectively raised nearly $30 million in capital in the past three years, we are developing bite-size lessons and shortcuts to help impact entrepreneurs raise capital smartly.

Smart Impact Capital will be a series of entrepreneur-friendly online training modules comprised of short video clips, interviews with entrepreneurs and investors, tools, and shortcuts to arm impact entrepreneurs with the right amount of information to raise smart capital.

Knowing the fast-paced and evolving environment in which impact entrepreneurs operate, we’ve designed the modules to allow users the freedom to move through topics as needed.

A potential investor signals interest in you? You can learn how to determine if the investor is a good fit.  Not sure your investment strategy is working? You can learn how to clearly articulate your strategy and key milestones to investors. Unclear about the impact different types of capital will have on your business?  You can model them through our scenario-planner.

In total, we’re designing nine modules grouped into three main categories: Custom-Build Your Investment Model, Develop Your Capital-Raising Strategy, and Manage Relationships with Investors. Those participating in our beta test will receive free, early access to two of the modules: Articulating Strategy to Impact Investors and Calculating Your Funding Gap: Financial Projections I.

How do I register for the Smart Impact Capital beta test?

Between mid-October and mid-December 2015, CASE will be beta testing two of the nine modules.  As part of the beta test, CASE will be offering FREE access to these modules, which contain approximately four hours total of training and active work.

If you are interested to participate in the beta test and provide feedback on the modules, please register by October 10th.

For maximum benefit, participating ventures should be mid-stage enterprises with a revenue model and some traction with customers and/or revenues and looking to raise (or in the process of raising) investment capital.

For any questions, contact us here.

Smart Impact Capital is funded by Duke and through the USAID-funded Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator at Duke.

Our team just wrapped up a series of events in Kenya, giving us the opportunity to see our East Africa innovators in the field and connect with the movers and shakers of healthcare innovation in Kenya. The week started with a series of innovator site visits and workshops for all the innovators in the third SEAD cohort, from the lakeside city of Kisumu to Nairobi, with discussions focused on many of the strategic issues our entrepreneurs are facing.

During the visit, CASE Initiative on Impact Investing (CASE i3) and Investors' Circle brought together investors from organizations such as Calvert Foundation and Alpha Mundi for the Investors’ Circle Investor Forum: Nairobi 2015 and networking event. The event was an opportunity for investors to come together and discuss the global health landscape in Africa and also hear pitches from several healthcare entrepreneurs, including SEAD's Penda Health.

Next up was an interesting policy roundtable that brought together early-stage organizations and the public sector in Kenya (with representation from the national and county level). Each discussant shared their learning on how to achieve meaningful partnerships. We then had a facilitated discussion where other participants (counties, private sector, innovator support organizations and academia) contributed. One key takeaway is the need for a framework and resources to improve the public/private engagement at the county level and allow new counties to learn. We co-hosted this event with Africa Capacity Alliance (ACA) and International Finance Corporation (IFC) that have been working on this topic and the discussion built on their work.

Finally, we organized the first ever SEAD Health Hackathon which ran from the afternoon of Friday 18th September to Sunday, the 20th. Sponsored by BD, Merck, Philips, Google Launchpad, Amsterdam Health and Technology Institute (ahti), Strathmore University, iLab Africa, iBiz Africa, and iHub, we had over 100 participants who formed 22 teams and presented 20 innovative ideas.   Check out some of the tweets from the event here:  https://storify.com/mtotowajirani/kenya-health-hackathon-2015

We’d like to thank all of our corporate sponsors for these events as well as USAID for their support of SEAD.  Amazing stories flowed through these events on the power of collaboration to enhance innovation and the latent opportunity when innovation clusters come together. We will be sharing these stories as we write more about each of these events in the coming weeks.

Like our own United States healthcare system, Kenya’s system is fractured and provides unequal access and quality of care to its population. On our recent trip to East Africa, however, we witnessed a region full of smart, dedicated and entrepreneurial people involved in innovative activities to create a stronger and better healthcare system.

Our Bass team met with people from non-governmental organizations, faith-based organizations, small private clinics, large hospitals, business consultants, academics, community members and patients. Our goal in these discussions was to learn about promising new approaches to providing healthcare, and the challenges that private healthcare enterprises face in scaling the impact of their work in resource-limited settings like rural Rwanda and urban Nairobi. In these discussions, the concept of “trust” repeatedly came up.  

Trust may be a somewhat tired and trite idea in relation to healthcare delivery. We know that clinical providers everywhere need to earn the trust of their patients and their patients’ families. Nonetheless, the word trust came up over and over in our conversations, in relation to clinical delivery, but also in relation to the many business and management components necessary to build a successful healthcare enterprise.

In Rwanda, we toured a district hospital that was opening its new maternity wing, the result of a strong public-private partnership between an NGO and the Ministry of Health (MOH). This maternity wing represented phase 4 of the hospital’s development. The first phase, started almost a decade ago, had been funded entirely by the NGO, and phases 2 and 3 each saw declines in funding support from the NGO, and increases by the MOH. Phase 4, we learned, was funded entirely by the MOH, with technical support provided by the NGO. We asked our hosts why the MOH had not initially put up funds for the first phase and they told us that the NGO needed to earn the MOH’s trust before the government felt comfortable in committing resources to the project. Both organizations are now strong, lasting partners, engaged in some of the most innovative, creative health system strengthening projects we have seen—all occurring in a district in Rwanda that did not have a hospital ten years ago.

In Kenya, we found that creative health workforce staffing and development are critical components to building a successful healthcare enterprise. Many Kenyans who cannot afford access to the best private facilities are dubious of the care they will receive at most public clinics. This lack of trust has, in part, led to a situation today where over half of all health services in Kenya are provided by the private sector. However, trust in the private sector is not much better. Even in many private clinics there is a perceived inconsistency in the quality of care and availability of non-fraudulent medicines.

One chain of primary clinics we visited in Nairobi is trying to address this issue of patient trust by providing consistently high quality care at a low price, using a high volume/low cost model. They are doing this by working closely with their clinical officers (CO) to provide continuing medical education and evidence-based performance feedback to each provider. After a relatively short intervention, the organization has seen a dramatic increase in the adherence to international clinical quality guidelines by its COs. Senior staff from this organization told us that they believe the single biggest factor in improving adoption of the guidelines, and therein clinical quality, in their clinics has been building a culture of respect and trust between clinical and administrative staff. Building this trust through frequent one-on-one feedback sessions with COs allows the clinicians to feel comfortable in coming to senior staff when they have questions, and more relaxed and confident in performing their duties.

In Kenya, we also visited a faith-based hospital that provides some of the best inpatient and outpatient care in the country, all on very limited resources and a passionate, dedicated workforce. After touring the hospital, the staff took us to a beautiful new regional medical clinic it had opened in the Rift Valley. The maternity ward was completely empty. We asked why. The Kenyan government, they explained, had recently enacted legislation that made maternal and neonatal care covered under the national insurance plan and, therefore, free to patients. We wondered the extent to which this lack of communication, planning and transparency has compromised the trust between this FBO and the public sector. Perhaps the road to distrust is paved with good intentions …

On our last day, we visited a brothel in a slum outside of Nairobi. A local NGO has engaged sex workers to provide community outreach to encourage other sex workers and their clients to seek HIV testing and treatment at the local medical center. In one of the town’s many brothels, we talked with sex workers and members of the NGO about their relationship, and how they managed to make this unlikely partnership work in a resource-limited environment where prostitution was illegal. The NGO staff worked in the slum, they walked the streets, befriended its citizens and had clearly gained their trust. They saw the NGO staff as friends and colleagues, and they were improving the health of Kenyans together.

Health systems are fragile and consist of intricate, often tenuous social bonds between many different individuals and organizations. Trust between these links is critical for a strong system to survive and thrive.

As the sun rises in Kampala, Uganda, Zaina’s toddler daughter Shanita isn’t feeling well. Today Zaina plans to take her to the local clinic. I worked with LifeNet International this summer, which provides medical and management training, pharmaceutical delivery and growth financing to a franchise of clinics to help clinics build capacity.

LifeNet has operated in Burundi since 2012 and expanded into Uganda this year with 10 health center partners.

To get a glimpse into LifeNet’s work, let’s step into Zaina’s world as she takes her daughter into the local health clinic.