About Agora

Agora Partnerships is dedicated to providing talented entrepreneurs in emerging markets with the tools, networks, and financing necessary to launch successful, socially responsible businesses.  Our mission is to identify the leadership talent of the developing world and unleash it.

We believe B Lab’s insights can be applied to businesses in developing countries – helping them understand how to be better corporate citizens and giving them a way to alert customers and investors that they practice what they preach.

Microfinance has changed the lives of millions across the globe through the powerful insight that the poor are credit-worthy. Agora believes it is time to extend this principle to developing world entrepreneurs, including those originally financed through micro-finance loans, who seek to launch or grow small and medium sized enterprises. These entrepreneurs hold the key to increasing exports and productivity, creating jobs and role models, and helping to build a culture of social responsibility and entrepreneurship.

The Change We Seek™

Agora Partnerships seeks to help grassroots, socially responsible small businesses in the developing world create jobs and fight poverty and inequality.

• Business, no matter how big or small, must take into account the needs of shareholders, employees, customers, and the environment. We are committed to helping small business entrepreneurs become leaders and role models in their community for the way in which they run their business.  We recognize that the most powerful force for attacking poverty is people and their will to create value where none exists or can even be imagined. Building trust and investing in relationships with change agents helps them live up to their potential to make a difference in their communities.

• There are many investors, consultants, technicians, students and professionals who want to help socially responsible developing world entrepreneurs overcome the odds but don't know how. We create mechanisms to allow these people to engage in socially responsible investing.  By connecting developing-world entrepreneurs with a variety of willing investors, Agora fills the gap between microfinance and larger-scale investments and lending.

• Businesses working with Agora have increased the number of full-time jobs they contribute to their communities by 17%.  83% of startups coming out of Agora’s process were still functioning one year after launch.  On average, Agora supported businesses have increased their profits by 57%.

Founding B Corporation

Agora Partnerships

• Industry: Diversified Investments
• Product/Services: NGO and SME fund
• Location: Washington, DC
• http://www.agorapartnerships.org