Jacqueline Novogratz Quotes

The moment you say microfinance everybody wants to help you.

Grameen Bank was formed as an institution owned by its borrower members, who are poor women. Through its unique decision-making process, Grameen Bank has given millions of women the means to emerge from the shadows in a male-dominated society and to make something of themselves.

Because microfinance is so manageable in terms of the size of the loan, people have made it the cornerstone to lifting women out of poverty.

If the basic structure of Grameen is changed, the worry is that the poor women who are the rightful owners of the bank will be disenfranchised.

Long live Grameen Bank. Let the power of poor women prevail.

I founded Grameen Bank to provide loans to those considered traditionally unbankable. Grameen Bank works with the poorest and often illiterate, providing uncollateralized micro-loans for tiny business enterprises by which they can lift themselves and their families out of poverty.

Microfinance does not require previous experience or loans to the same extent as a small-business loan, so it's easier for women to enter the micro sector.

The invention of the micro-loan was a big surprise to me. Who would have guessed loans of less than $20 made to poor people in undeveloped countries could create thriving local economies? And, even more surprisingly, that they more reliably pay off their debts than the wealthy of the world.

The Grameen Bank Ordinance with amendments up to 2008 is a beautiful legal structure for the fulfillment of the ideals and objectives of the bank. Any change in this structure will be devastating for the bank.

Making loans and fighting poverty are normally two of the least glamorous pursuits around, but put the two together and you have an economic innovation that has become not just popular but downright chic. The innovation - microfinance - involves making small loans to poor entrepreneurs, usually in developing countries.

I had no idea that I would ever get involved with something like lending money to poor people, given the circumstances in which I was working in Bangladesh.

With Kickstarter, people are patrons of the arts. With Mosaic, people can be clean-energy investors like Warren Buffett.

Prior to SunRun, I was headed toward a career in venture capital and then realized I wanted to apply my knowledge of finance more directly to helping change the world.

We spend billions on international aid annually, but we don't find ways to connect people to dignified work. I realized that if we don't think about ways to harness private capital to solve problems, we're leaving large amounts of money on the table and doing ourselves a disservice.

I went to the bank and proposed that they lend money to the poor people. The bankers almost fell over.

Microcredit has shown how you can reach out to people that conventional banking cannot. It has demonstrated that it's a doable proposition.

There's a lot of work being done through the innovation arm of the World Bank, at the World Bank Institute. There's a lot of work that we at the Rockefeller Foundation are doing and funding towards that end, and increasingly, the U.S. government is getting engaged.

There are many successful startup funders who are looking for ways to make a difference in the world.

The Microfinance segment is a challenging client servicing space and thus requires a great amount of dedication, integrity and teamwork.

Imagine: I got patent rights to the only machine in the world to make low-cost sanitary napkins - a hot-cake product. Anyone with an MBA would immediately accumulate the maximum money. But I did not want to. Why? Because from childhood, I know no human being died because of poverty - everything happens because of ignorance.

I like most of the venture capitalists I know; they're smart, well-intended guys who genuinely enjoy helping entrepreneurs succeed. And I love venture capital and investment capital of all categories - its economic impact is proven. The more of it the better.

What attracted me towards microfinance is it's a very sustainable business, which has an impact on people's lives yet it can be very profitable.

We should redefine the metric for effective lending, viz., prioritise loans to enterprises, which will generate more employment.

Microfinance is an incredibly powerful tool ... but we must move beyond micro-hopes and micro-ambitions for women.

As many micro-credit schemes across the world can testify, investment in women is the best investment for the future.