Initiatives
Agora invests social capital through its strategic initiatives and financial capital through its capital program
Current Initiatives
Agora Accelerator
Past Initiatives
Launching New Ventures in Nicaragua
Agora Accelerator
The Agora Accelerator is Agora’s most ambitious initiative to date: to build a thriving culture of impact entrepreneurship in Central America and Mexico. The program seeks to bring leadership and management training, a global community of socially responsible business leaders and investors, and access to human and financial capital to the region’s highest potential impact entrepreneurs. The program is focused on three key themes:
1) Access to Knowledge
2) Access to Community and Networks
3) Access to Growth Capital
The Accelerator will invest social capital into early and growth stage entrepreneurs and will include training seminars around issues of sustainability and governance, access to local business leaders, mentors, and consultants, and an annual conference to bring together entrepreneurs and impact investors.
Women's Initiative
Women are woefully underrepresented when it comes to receiving business loans or investments. They represent a huge investment opportunity that can generate enormous social and financial returns. The purpose of Agora’s Women’s Initiative is to give women entrepreneurs the tools, networks, and access to capital necessary to achieve significant growth, while building role models and a community of support throughout Central America.
Almost 40% of the businesses Agora supports are owned and operated by female entrepreneurs. Agora partners with Vital Voices, Pathways to Prosperity, and other groups to help unleash the potential of women-run businesses.
Read More about Agora's Women's Initiative
LiderES Prize
The LiderES (Sustainable Business Leadership) Prize is the first of its kind in Central America. Its purpose is to celebrate impact entrepreneurs that through their businesses create social or environmental value for their community. In order to create a culture around responsible businesses, it is essential to honor those impact entrepreneurs who deliver superior social and financial performance.
This prize seeks to inspire a new generation of local impact entrepreneurs and investors. Winners receive capital, media exposure, and free strategy consulting to increase their impact.
The prize was launched thanks to key partnerships with the Nicaraguan Association for Corporate Social Responsibility (uniRSE) and the Cooperation Program of Germany (DED). The LiderES prize is supported by Citi Foundation, PROPEMCE, and the Cooperation Program of Germany.
MicroMentor
The MicroMentor Initiative is a partnership with MercyCorps to expand MercyCorps model of linking small businesses with mentors. Micromentor’s innovative approach to providing business mentoring to small and growing businesses dramatically increases entrepreneurs’ access to the critical business management know-how and industry-specific expertise needed to launch and grow a successful enterprises.
Learn more about our partnership with MercyCorps
Past Initiatives
Launching New Ventures in Nicaragua
From 2006-2010 Agora entered into a global partnership alliance with USAID to provide technical assistance to hundreds of Nicaraguan small business entrepreneurs. Agora improved their management capabilities and provided them with the opportunity to access capital from the Agora Venture Fund and other financing sources. This initiative introduced Nicaraguan small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to venture capital as an alternative to bank loans.
Launching New Ventures in Nicaragua Results
ANDE Latin America Conference
Building a movement around impact investing and impact entrepreneurship requires training, collaboration, and professional development opportunities for local staff. The first Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) Latin America conference, held in Granada, Nicaragua in March of 2010 brought together 144 participants from 77 organization and 16 countries. Co-sponsored with Root Capital and TechnoServe the conference was ANDE’s first gathering in Latin America. The conference was generously supported by an ANDE Capacity Building Grant and by the Kellogg Foundation
ANDE Conference Website
Read Agora's Managing Partner's Reflections on the Event
Social Impact Reporting
The central premise behind the impact investment and impact entrepreneurship movements is that certain kinds of businesses can generate enormous social and environmental value. Measuring this value is critical to building the field and enabling large amounts of capital to flow to impact entrepreneurs. There has been enormous progress and leadership in recent years to create global taxonomies and standards to help both social and financial investors measure success. Since our founding, Agora has been committed to contributing to efforts to better report and understand the impact of small businesses on their communities.
We are an official pilot user of the Pulse Portfolio Management System, and beta tester of the Impact Reporting and Investment Standards (IRIS) and have contributed to metric work conducted by the DOEN Foundation. In 2007, working with Dalberg and the Rockefeller Foundation, the Agora Venture Fund helped develop and test an early prototype of what will eventually become the Global Impact Investing Rating System (GIIRS). Agora is a strong supporter of the GIIRS effort, which we hope to bring to Central America through the Agora Accelerator and Prometeo Fund.
- News: Agora Venture Fund Named a Pioneer GIIRS Fund
- NextBillion.net - "And the Granada Declaration Was Signed..."
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