Gumball Greetings: New Colleges, Grants, and Media Coverage
Dear Friend,
Here's our second newsletter. We want to share our activities and endeavors in student entrepreneurship and microfinance, and we hope you enjoy this update!
Our Mission
Gumball Capital engages students with micropreneurship for social good through experience, education and investment. We created a one-week microfinance-benefit competition called the Gumball Challenge, where students form teams and create value using $27 and 27 gumballs. They return any revenue they generate to the Gumball Fund, which supports the working poor in developing nations through Kiva.org.
Campus Updates!
Congratulations to the following teams for winning National Awards from the Gumball Challenge! St. Olaf wins the Best Microfinance Advocate by hosting a 7-day "microfinance for microimpact" event. Sewanee wins the Biggest Risktaker award for selling microfinance-themed T-shirts. Well Rounded wins the Most Money Raised award, building an eleven-foot tower of quarters of "pocket change for social change." Finally, Yummy Gummy was the Most Innovative, doing everything from In N Out runs to date auctions, complete with hilarious bathroom stall flyers.
A big shoutout to all participating teams Ð because of them, Gumball's been able to loan money to 100 more entrepreneurs in developing countries! In the Gumball Fund is now $5000 in outstanding loans, with $5900 loaned out to 233 entrepreneurs!
At Stanford, we've been able to drive a highly successful recruitment campaign to bring new student-volunteers into our organization. We warmly welcome 6 highly-motivated new members into key positions such as Finance, Marketing, and Outreach. Their expertise and experience will launch us into a bigger and better organization.
We've also been able to recruit new colleges for next year's Gumball Challenge! Both University of Michigan Ann Arbor and Ohio State have signed up to run the competition next fall. We're also opening the Challenge to high school teams. We've already attracted interest from the neighboring Palo Alto and Gunn High Schools, and we're hoping to spread our mission of student entrepreneurship and microfinance to more high schools around the nation.
We are proud to announce a partnership with the Recycle to Eradicate Poverty program, an affiliate of the Chiapas Project. It fights poverty and protects the environment at the same time by receiving donations for old cell phones and ink cartridges. We're honored, and we look forward to a meaningful and successful partnership!
Grants and Awards
Gumball was recently announced a finalist in Uuni's Big Idea competition! We're now shooting for the ?20,000 grand prize.
We're also semifinalists of Stanford's Social E-Challenge! The Social-E Challenge is a business plan competition for entrepreneurial ventures that effect social change. With two more rounds to go, we're working hard for the first prize of $50,000. Check out our younoodle site for the competition!
Media Coverage
During Stanford's Entrepreneurship Week kickoff on February 22nd, Gumball Capital was featured in Imagine It!, an acclaimed documentary on last year's Innovation Tournament (which Gumball wonÉand which was how we got started!). It's an inspiring film, and you can download it for free here.
On February 18th, our Executive Director Jason Shen talked at an SD Forum panel alongside such luminaries as Matt Flannery of Kiva, Ashwini Narayanan of Microplace, and Margarita Quihuis of Indigo Financiera about the impact of technology and microfinance on emerging economies. We were honored to speak with such a cast!
Why Gumballs?
We see gumballs as a metaphor for change: By placing a small amount of money in a gumball machine you allow a gumball to roll out. That one released gumball shifts all the remaining gumballs, moving them one step closer to the exit tunnel.
In a similar way, each developing-world entrepreneur lifted out of poverty through microfinance helps other members of his or her community by providing jobs, goods, and services. The entrepreneurs' increased income also goes to better health services and education for their families, which helps break the intergenerational cycle of poverty.
Links
Gumball Capital, our website
Gumballs Making Change on YouTube
Profile on Do Something
Case Study on Social Edge
Microfinance!
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to the poor.
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