In a recent interview with Tufts Daily, the student newspaper of Massachusetts’ Tufts University, Omidyar-Tufts Microfinance Fund Director Tryfan Evans said that the fund will be announcing a positive return for 2009 after final audits are complete. The fund was founded in 2005 with a gift of USD 100 million to Tufts University from Pierre and Pam Omidyar, founders of Omidyar Network, a “philanthropic investment firm.”
Mr Evans explained that the objective of the Fund is to “to support the university, as with any other long-term investment asset within the endowment, and the second is to…demonstrate the viability of institutional investment in the microfinance sector.” He further reported that demand for microfinance has been only a bit less strong than before the economic downturn, but that, “[W]e saw a great contraction in bank funding in Eastern Europe that…has had an impact on growth rates across the region, as these microfinance institutions have not been able to attract the liquidity to refinance their portfolios and grow.” The fund primarily invests in other microfinance funds and has exposure in 34 countries across Eastern Europe and the Southern Hemisphere. Mr Evans reports that, “We are now four years into this project, and we are making some very long-term investments, and some of the partnership agreements we are entering into have terms of up to ten years.” Proceeds of the fund are evenly divided between the operating budget of the University and reinvestment in the microfinance.
Sources and resources:
Tufts Daily article
http://www.tuftsdaily.com/tufts-microfinance-director-reports-strong-growth-for-fund-1.2112772
Omidyar-Tufts Microfinance Fund
http://www.tufts.edu/microfinancefund/
Omidyar Network
http://www.omidyar.com/
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