Trustee: Impact Entrepreneurs

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Overview

Why are you interested in becoming a Trustee?
As a program of a public university, we are unable to directly lend or invest. However, the social ventures we incubate face a severe lack of seed and early-stage funding. Kiva Zip offers an important way for them to share their mission, connect with like-minded investors, and source small loans to help launch and grow their businesses. We believe that partnering with Kiva Zip can help us to better serve local social entrepreneurs and improve their chances of success.
What is the mission of your organization?
Impact Entrepreneurs at Portland State University seeks to unleash the power of business for social impact. We do this in three ways: inspiration, incubation, and acceleration. - Inspiration: Events, courses and immersive field studies for university students and community members to learn about the cutting edge field of social innovation and entrepreneurship. - Incubation: Our Social Innovation Incubator supports both startup and intrapreneurial initiatives through mentorship, workshops, networking, visibility, and tailored consulting services. - Acceleration: The Entrepreneurial Leadership Program provides business, leadership and social innovation training to staff of social mission organizations, strengthening their capacity and accelerating their impact.

Borrower Due Diligence

How will you decide who to endorse as a borrower? What due diligence will you conduct?
Only clients that have successfully completed one of our programs would be endorsed as borrowers. During our training programs, we work closely with participants to review their financial history and projections, assess the viability of their business models, evaluate their approach to generating positive social and environmental impact, and gain an understanding of their potential as leaders. By program completion, members must have developed a clear model for financial viability and positive social impact, with demonstrated customer demand. Only at this point would we feel comfortable endorsing them as borrowers.

About Impact Entrepreneurs


Total loans: $15,500


All Loans for this Trustee