Acumen Fund

Investing and portfolio management:acumen invests patient capital in business models that deliver critical, affordable goods and services to the world's poor, improving the lives of millions. Since 2001, Acumen has invested in businesses that provide access to health care, energy, education, water & sanitation, housing, financial services, and agricultural services to low-income customers. Our investments are addressing the problems of poverty in east and west africa, south asia, latin america and the united states. Acumen invested in eight new companies in 2018, reaching a cumulative $117 million invested in 116 businesses serving the poor. [see continuation on schedule o]acumen's patient capital approach yielded exits across our pioneer portfolio this year. Our long-time clean energy investee d.light design closed $41 million in a series e equity raise, allowing Acumen to exit its series a shares; poultry farming investee ethiochicken repaid its loan to Acumen three years ahead of schedule with outsized ...

Fellows and leadership programs Acumen's fellowship program in east africa, pakistan and india builds cohorts of local social change leaders and facilitates five week-long seminars ranging from holistic approaches to problem-solving to frameworks for thriving in challenging environments. This year, Acumen launched fellowship programs in two additional regions, colombia and west africa. By the end of q4 2018, we had reached a cumulative 442 Acumen fellows worldwide. [see continuation on schedule o]in addition, we continued to grow +Acumen, our online learning platform for social change. We offered 19 free courses and 20 master classes, growing our online community to roughly 450,000 course-takers from 192 countries. We increased the depth of this online content as well by launching accelerators, or structured offerings for innovators to develop new business models and initiatives through curated curricula, coaching and peer networks. Our partners such as american express, accion international, ideo.org, grameen foundation, and fossil ...

Impact and communicationsthe goal of the impact and communications teams at Acumen is to support the mission of changing the way the world tackles poverty by sharing the insights from our work, catalyzing an entrepreneurial, markets-based approach to solving poverty and shifting public perception to see the potential of low-income people.acumen's work in impact has continued to advance the organization's role in understanding and measuring social performance in the impact investing industry. [see continuation on schedule o]building upon the launch of lean data measurement services in 2015, we aim to make impact data equally as relevant and foundational as financial data to supercharge our capacity to solve the world's toughest problems. The lean data methodology leverages modern technology to listen to the poor, closing the communication gap between social enterprises and their customers and amplifying voices previously unheard. Subsequent to year end 2018, in service of working toward a new ...