About WILFund: Executive Summary for Corporations
WILFund Defined
WILFund is an opportunity for corporations, executives, and businesspeople from all fields to share their resources with determined, capable, but struggling women in the developing world. With your help, we can enable these women to acquire the economic means and confidence to fulfill their dreams, provide an example to their children, and open doors to future progress.
Name: WILFund: Women’s International Loan Fund
Mission: To help women in impoverished countries tackle poverty
Affiliation: As an initiative of World Vision, WILFund will support women’s loans in impoverished countries, regardless of race, ethnicity or religious affiliation.
Strategy: Through World Vision’s microfinance institutions in more than 45 countries, WILFund provides microloans to enterprising, hard-working women who lack the collateral or credit history to qualify for traditional loans.
What WILFund Accomplishes
WILFund provides women the financial means to start or grow their businesses and to generate higher incomes. In turn, women who receive loans extend the benefits to their families as they improve their standard of living and help their communities experience economic growth. They ensure their children stay in school, buy more nutritious food, seek necessary health care, and give their families tangible hope for a better future. These benefits extend into the community, and even across continents, as the loan is recycled with interest and the fund’s capital continues to grow.
Why WILFund is for Women
According to the UN, investing in women is key to fighting poverty: "Promoting equal access for women to income-generating activities, land, water, credit and other resources is essential to poverty reduction."
- Women need the help: They comprise 70 percent of 1.3 billion people living on less than a $1 a day in extreme poverty. Loans enable them to earn incomes.
- Women don’t have other options: The UN states that women bear the greatest burdens of poverty and generally have more restricted opportunities for overcoming poverty. Women are often discriminated against when they try to launch a business—still considered a man’s domain in many cultures. They lack opportunities to advance themselves economically. Without credit history or collateral, they don’t qualify for traditional loans. WILFund gives these women the chance they wouldn’t have otherwise.
- Children benefit: When women have an income, they spend it on their families, providing them with nutritious food, improved living conditions, health care, and education. The benefits are passed on to future generations as their children grow up with increased confidence in their own ability to be successful.
- Communities benefit: With the success of their business endeavors, women create job opportunities for others within their community, thus stimulating the economy.
- Women are a good investment: Their loan repayment rate is 97 percent.
WILFund works through Microenterprise Development
Microenterprise development can be a powerful catalyst for turning a poverty-stricken community around. It has been proven that helping a poor community gain access to financial resources can help that community begin to thrive economically and become self-sufficient. WILFund works through microenterprise development, enabling women to turn to World Vision’s microfinance institutions for much-needed loans.
The Security of Microfinance Institutions
A microfinance institution (MFI) is a local lending office within a community, managed by indigenous professionals whose experience ensures that donors’ funds are well protected and wisely invested. WILFund grants loans in increments of $100,000 to World Vision’s microfinance institutions in 40 countries around the world. World Vision’s MFIs use the money they receive from WILFund exclusively for microloans to women.WILFund's assets are safe because WILFund only loans to MFIs that are owned and operated by World Vision. This means that WILFund’s assets are protected from political corruption that may exist in a given region. Additionally, these MFIs are sustainable operations because they charge market-rate interest to loan recipients, further ensuring the safety of WILFund's assets.
The Fund at Work:
As a capital fund, WILFund is designed to increase its assets over time through interest generated from MFI loans. Donor Advisory Boards determine how 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
- For each disbursement, World Vision submits a minimum of three proposals to the 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 Board carefully reviews each proposal it receives, which include detailed positive measurable impact estimates (upon the lives of women and children).
- After reviewing this information, Board members are ready to make their educated decisions, ensuring funds are being put to the most effective use possible in a region where the loan will make the most significant impact.
Here’s How It Works: The Cycle of Hope:
- Donor makes gift to WILFund
- Gift is pooled with other donors’ funds
- WILFund Board selects MFI recipient (Megadonors, however, are able to designate a specific MFI recipient, independent of the Board)
- WILFund loans to MFI
- MFI loans to clients
- Clients repay MFI loans with market-rate interest
- MFI repays loans to WILFund with interest
- Process starts again, possibly in another region of the world
Loans to Clients—Vital Details
Average Loan Amount: $50-$5,000
Average Loan Duration: 90 days (varies according to region)
Average Default: 97% repayment rate
Rate of Interest: Market-rate (varies according to region)
Along with loans, women receive:
- Vital job training
- Enhanced business skills
- Valuable technical support
- HIV/AIDS prevention and advocacy education
Loans are used to:
Start businesses
- Purchase supplies and equipment
- Expand operations
- Market goods and services
- Hire additional staff
Loans Enable Women to:
- Improve living conditions for their families
- Seek health care
- Buy nutritious food for their families
- Give their children an education
- Set an example for their children for the future
- Gain confidence in their abilities
- Become an empowered person
The Fund Manager: World Vision
Capital donated to WILFund becomes an asset of World Vision, an organization with a solid history of credibility in the international community and more than $1 billion in revenue worldwide. World Vision U.S. (legally named "World Vision, Inc.") and World Vision International, are legally separate, but affiliated entities. They are part of the global World Vision organization, which has more than 55 years of expertise and experience in helping the world’s poorest children and families in nearly 100 countries tackle poverty. WILFund is managed by World Vision, Inc. -- a 501-c3 organization with headquarters in Federal Way, WA and tax ID number 95-1922279.
World Vision U.S. Numbers at a Glance (figures from fiscal year 2004)
Total Revenue: $807 million
Total overhead: 13 %
People served worldwide: 100 million
People served in the U.S.: 1.5 million
Number of staff worldwide: 20,000
Total number of U.S. Donors and volunteers: 3.6 million
Total number of children sponsored: 2.4 million
World Vision International
Total Revenue: $1.55 billion
World Vision's Microenterprise Development Tools:
- More than 45 microfinance institutions already in place on four continents
- Nearly 250,000 existing clients
- A current total loan portfolio under investment of $71 million
- More than 15 years of experience in microenterprise development
How Microenterprise Starts in a Community:
World Vision development projects focus first on helping communities gain access to:- Clean water
- Food and agricultural training
- Primary health care
- Education.
Once this important foundation is laid, World Vision is able to concentrate on equipping community members with the job skills and financial means to become self-sufficient. That’s when WILFund and World Vision microfinance institutions enter the picture.
WILFund Provides a Solid Return on Your Philanthropic Investment
When you make a contribution to WILFund, you become a shareholder in women’s lives where the yield is tangible hope. Investing in women makes sound fiscal sense. Not only do women demonstrate a repayment rate of 97 percent, they also use their loans to better the lives of children and 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 WILFund’s 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.
Common Questions about WILFund:
Can a corporation direct its investment to a particular type of loan or country?
Major donors of $100,000 or more can determine to which World Vision microfinance institution the donation will be disbursed, under guidance of World Vision U.S.
If a corporation makes the option available to its employee base, can it direct its investment to a particular type of loan or country?
Donors can rest assured their contributions are going where the help is needed the most, when it is needed the most. All donations are pooled with other donor’s funds and disbursed by the WILFund Donor Board of Advisors.Yet if employees pool their donations with that of their corporation’s they can possibly accrue enough donation capital combined to qualify the company for the $100,000 disbursement.
How does "political unrest" impact WILFund, and how safe is my investment?
WILFund is different than most funds, because it operates under World Vision’s unique sustainable development model. World Vision works within poor communities to first ensure people have access to clean water, nutritious food, health care, and decent living conditions. Once this foundation is laid, World Vision helps communities develop their own economic stability by establishing microfinance institutions that eventually become self-sufficient and independent, no longer in need of receiving loans from WILFund.WILFund’s assets are safe because WILFund only loans to MFIs that are owned and operated by World Vision. This means that WILFund’s assets are protected from political corruption that may exist in a given region. Additionally, these MFIs are sustainable operations because they charge market-rate interest to loan recipients, further ensuring the safety of WILFund’s assets.
Here’s How You Can Help:
Examples of Loans at Work:
- $1,000 provides eight women in Cambodia with a loan to expand their food-vending, vegetable-growing, and craft microenterprise.
- $2,500 helps 25 woman buy seeds and fertilizer to grow more crops to market in places like Ecuador.
- $5,000 buys 25 oilseed preses in Zambia to extract sunflower and peanut oil for a women to sell.
- $10,000 will completely underwrite the costs of a Community Bank of 15-25 clients.
- $100,000 will fully fund a WILFund loan to a World Vision microfinance institution, impacting the lives of thousands of women and children.
