Big, Bad, Audacious Unitus: Building a $1.2 Billion Social Enterprise for Microcredit

Abstract

This action research is a social science analysis of a progressive organization over two decades, Unitus, Inc. It was established to accelerate the microfinance movement starting in 2000 to tear down the barriers in order to expand capital for funding poor people’s struggles. The first few dozen NGOs to do this beginning in the 1980s were mostly small, underfunded, and limited in terms of managerial competence. In contrast, Unitus came into being as a social enterprise to remedy these deficiencies. Its founders sought to design a radically visionary approach that would offer a new model for doing microfinance using investment partners, not just small donors. Over the next decade, it raised $1.2 billion, partnering and providing loan capital to various NGOs in 23 countries benefitting many millions of the poor. After a decade of success up through 2010, Unitus then shifted strategically and morphed into different organizations throughout the following years until the present. This paper analyzes the origins, systems, strategies, and successes in achieving such results, as well as challenges, problems and criticisms until 2021.