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About WILFund

Executive Summary
How the Fund Works
How a Loan Works
Cycle of Hope
Donor Benefits at a Glance
Your Gift at Work
FAQs



About WILFund: How the Fund Works

Why Invest in WILFund?



WILFund Provides a Solid Return on Investment

When you make a contribution to WILFund, you become a shareholder in women’s lives where the yield is tangible hope. The UN states that women bear the greatest burdens of poverty and generally have more restricted opportunities for overcoming poverty. Investing in women makes sound financial sense. Not only do women demonstrate a repayment rate of 97 percent, they also use their loans to better the lives of others around them.

Additionally, the Fund itself is interest-generating, and as such it grows over time, helping provide maximum social impact to women worldwide. Last but not least, your asset manager is a knowledgeable and experienced organization that has garnered a solid reputation worldwide. So while you’re helping women find hope for themselves and their children, you’re also giving to a fund that keeps growing and passing on the benefits to more women. You couldn’t ask for a better return on investment.

Visit the following sections to learn how WILFund puts your gifts to work:

WILFund Gifts Grow over Time

Making Donations Count

When you donate to WILFund, you can rest assured your donation’s impact is maximized. As a capital fund, WILFund is designed to increase its assets over time through interest generated from MFI loans. Here’s how it works:

Individual gifts to WILFund are pooled together, and then loaned to a World Vision MicroFinance Institution (MFI) -- a World Vision lending institution in a developing country managed by local professionals specializing in granting small loans to poor people. The MFI distributes the funds as loans to individual women in need. When women repay their loan with market-rate interest, the MFI repays the loan with interest to WILFund. During this process, assets increase from the MFI interest accrued.

WILFund Gifts Provide Maximum Social Impact

The Ripple Effect

One gift can create a ripple effect. Once a loan is repaid with interest to WILFund, the funds are available to be loaned again to another woman in need. Recipients put their loans to good use, building businesses to grow profits. As their businesses expand, they hire more women, thus passing on the benefits of the loan to the community at-large.

Your gift to WILFund is one of perpetuity -- the original amount continually multiplies as it helps change one woman’s life after another, year after year.

Leave a Legacy

Consider this scenario:

Although loan size and repayment schedules differ by region and microfinance institution (MFI), a typical microloan is approximately $100 and a typical repayment schedule is 90 days. Therefore a gift of $1,000 could aid as many as 40 women a year. In 50 years, one gift of $1,000 could assist approximately 2,000 women. If each loan recipient supports 4 children, the original $1,000 gift would help 2,000 women and 8,000 children -- a total of 10,000 lives impacted! That’s thousands of lives of women and children, all touched, improved, and transformed by a single $1,000 gift. And the gift continues to help women for the life of WILFund -- long beyond 50 years.

Additionally, the original $1,000 gift continues to grow in value as the interest accrues over time. Therefore, the size of the gift increases every year, the number of women and children helped increases every year -- making the total number of clients and beneficiaries in 50 years much greater than 10,000.

Further, by increasing the economic status of each loan recipient, WILFund allows women to better provide for her children. They buy more nutritious food, seek necessary health care, improve their living conditions, ensure their children receive an education, and provide an example of success for their children. In turn, the children of these women grow up and are better able to support and educate their children -- breaking the cycle of poverty and providing long-term, multi-generational benefits.

Also, as loan recipients expand their business, they typically hire other women in the community, thus extending the impact of the gift beyond the original family and into the community at large.

WILFund is unique in its ability to have such a widespread impact on so many women and children. The number of lives potentially changed by one small gift to WILFund is virtually limitless.

WILFund Helps Women Worldwide

According to the United Nations in its report on the World’s Women 2000, women remain at the lower end of a segregated labor market and continue to be concentrated in a few occupations, to hold positions of little or no authority, and to receive less pay than men. At the same time, women outnumber men in most regions of the world. WILFund recognizes this discrepancy, and seeks to empower women all over the world by giving them the financial means to improve their standards of living.

Meeting the Changing Needs of Our World

We all know that economic situations in many parts of the world can change rapidly. But with WILFund, you can be confident your gift will be put to good use in regions of the world where it is needed the most, when it is needed the most.

A Global Impact

WILFund is based on a sustainable development model. The Fund keeps growing as interest accrues, thus ensuring it will keep being available to help women worldwide for years to come.

How do we make this happen? Most microfinance programs disburse funds as one-time grants that benefit a single microfinance institution. But WILFund loans to MFIs who in turn provide loans to women for starting or expanding a business. When these women repay the loans with market rate interest to the MFI, the MFI pays the loan back to WILFund. As a result, we're able to shift our focus as need dictates. The impact is global, transforming the lives of women and their families from Bosnia to India to Peru.

The WILFund Team

Donor Advisory Boards

WILFund relies on a select group of donor boards of advisors to determine where donated capital is allocated. These boards of advisors are comprised of educated entrepreneurial men and women in the U.S. and Bermuda who have demonstrated a strong interest in microfinance, international development, and global social justice.


A Look at the Process

The WILFund Donor Advisory Boards receive proposals from individual World Vision microfinance institutions from around the world and makes its selections based on where the need is greatest.

For each disbursement, World Vision submits a minimum of three proposals to WILFund Donor Advisory Boards. Only World Vision programs that allocate funds specifically for women’s businesses and women’s employment qualify for loans from WILFund. The Donor Advisory Boards carefully review each proposal received, which includes detailed positive measurable impact estimates (upon the lives of women and children). This information enables Boards to make educated decisions, thus ensuring funds are being put to the most effective use possible in a region where the loan will make the most significant impact.

Expertise and Experience You Can Trust

A Secure Investment

When you make a donation to WILFund, your investment is in safe, qualified hands.

When capital is donated to WILFund, it becomes an asset of World Vision, an organization with a solid history of credibility in the international community and more than $1.55 billion in revenue worldwide. They have more than 55 years of expertise and experience in helping developing countries tackle poverty and more than 14 years in microenterprise development. As your asset manager, World Vision offers an unbeatable return for your philanthropic investment with little risk

The Right Tools

With more than 45 microfinance institutions already in place on four continents, nearly 250,000 existing clients, and a current total loan portfolio under investment of $71 million, World Vision has already created the infrastructure and developed the expertise required to provide and administer microfinance programs. With these tools already in place, WILFund is free to concentrate solely on giving loans to qualified MFI candidates.

A Proven Track Record

But World Vision doesn’t just promise results with your donation to WILFund -- their track record proves they deliver.

A George Washington University study conducted between 1996 and 2001 concluded that World Vision’s microlending programs in Uganda, Tanzania, and Peru have "contributed substantially to the health and economic well-being of clients and their families."

Dramatic results, like these from Uganda, are typical of WILFund recipients all over the globe:

  • 67% reported increased spending on their children’s education
  • 95% reported improvement in their personal health.

Your Gift is Needed

Help us Tackle Poverty

WILFund has the experience, the knowledge, and the resources to bring about social change and improve the lives of the clients they serve. With WILFund, you can play a vital role in touching the lives of women and children in need.

Microenterprise development can make a difference, but not without the participation of donors like you. Today, microloans serve only about 3 percent of the world’s poor. Imagine the change you can make by helping us reach the other 97 percent. Help us tackle poverty, and change the world one woman and one family at a time.

To contribute to WILFund, fill out our Online Giving Form, call 1.800.532.8922, or email us.