Outside the U.S.

International Labour Organization

The International Labour Organization, a UN-organization headquartered in Geneva, maintains extensive information on this site about labor practices worldwide, including sections on cooperatives and community development (“social”) finance. Read more about International Labour Organization...

International Co-operative Alliance

The International Co-operative Alliance is the peak association that represents over 800 million members of cooperatives worldwide. Read more about International Co-operative Alliance...

Institute for Development Evaluation, Assistance and Solutions (IDEAS)

Founded in 1975, the IDEAS mission is to contribute to the sustainable economic development of poor and moderate income people. This is done primarily by providing services to microfinance institutions (MFIs) and other organizations that provide financial products and non-financial services. Read more about Institute for Development Evaluation, Assistance and Solutions (IDEAS)...

The Consultative Group to Assist the Poor

CGAP, founded in 1995, is a consortium of 28 public and private development agencies working together to expand access to financial services for the poor in developing countries. The web site includes a wide variety of publications and on-line resources about international microfinance issues and trends. Read more about The Consultative Group to Assist the Poor...

Confederación Nacional Cooperativa de Actividades Diversas de la República Mexicana (Mexico; note that site is in Spanish only)

Founded in 1998, the Confederación Nacional Cooperativa de Actividades Diversas de la República Mexicana is a voluntary, collaborative effort by unions and cooperative federations to establish programs and initiatives that are mutually beneficial. In this leadership role, the Confederación strives to consolidate and strengthen the Mexican Cooperative Movement and improve the quality of life of those involved in cooperatives. Read more about Confederación Nacional Cooperativa de Actividades Diversas de la República Mexicana (Mexico; note that site is in Spanish only)...

Ashoka: Innovators for the Public

Ashoka identifies and invests in leading social entrepreneurs - extraordinary individuals with unprecedented ideas for change in their communities - and supports the individual, idea and institution through all phases of development. Thus far, over 1,700 Ashoka Fellows have been elected in over 53 countries and are working on projects related to the environment, education and learning, health, human rights, civic participation and economic development. Read more about Ashoka: Innovators for the Public...

Acumen Fund

Acumen Fund is a global non-profit venture fund which aims to serve the 4 billion people in the world who live on less than $4 a day. Acumen Fund was incorporated in 2001, with seed capital from the Rockefeller Foundation, Cisco Systems Foundation and three individual philanthropists. Areas of concentration so far have been investments in health technology, water systems, housing, and finance. Read more about Acumen Fund...

Self-Employed Women's Association

Founded in 1972, SEWA is India's first and largest trade union of informal sector workers, with a total membership of 694,551 self-employed women and a population coverage of around one million. SEWA also provides members services, often through cooperatives. As of 2002, SEWA's membership included 89 cooperatives, with a total membership of 41,393 workers. Read more about Self-Employed Women's Association...

Seikatsu Club Consumers' Co-operative Union (English language site)

Established in 1965 as a buying club for families to purchase affordable, pure milk, SCCCU has evolved into a movement concerned with building alternative production, consumption, social welfare, and activist networks. It has spawned producer co-ops, social welfare organizations, an activist political network, an environmental program, and a program to support world peace. Today, it is an association of 22 consumer co-ops and 8 associated companies, with 250,000 individual members. Annual sales for the last fiscal year (April 2003-March 2004) were $690 million. Read more about Seikatsu Club Consumers' Co-operative Union (English language site)...

Rabobank

Comprised of 152 independent local Rabobanks, their central organization – Rabobank Nederland -, and several subsidiaries, Rabobank Group is an international financial service provider administered by cooperative principles and values. Offering retail banking, wholesale banking, asset management, leasing and real estate services, Rabobank Group has nearly 60,000 employees, serving more than 9.5 million clients across 46 countries and is considered among the world’s 25 largest financial institutions in terms of Tier I capital. Read more about Rabobank...

Owenstown

The Hometown Foundation of Scotland, dedicated to community development, has initiated a plan to create a town run as a cooperative. Conceived in the image of Robert Owen, a founder in the socialist and cooperative movements, Owenstown is set to have 8,000 homes for families of various sizes and incomes and will strive to be carbon neutral. The cooperative will be run by a board of trustees until the town becomes sufficient enough to elect its own board members. It is currently in the planning stages and seeking community feedback. Read more about Owenstown...

Mondragón Corporación Cooperativa

Mondragón, located in the Basque region of Spain, is a network of 264 companies, approximately half of which are worker cooperatives. Now the largest corporation in the Basque region and the seventh largest in Spain, MCC is also the world's largest worker co-op with over 34,000 members as of the end of 2007 and total employment of over 100,000. By 2010, co-op membership is expected to grow considerably to between 72,000 and 77,000, once Eroski, a network company that is mostly located outside of Basque County, completes the cooperative conversion process. Read more about Mondragón Corporación Cooperativa...

Microfinance Information Exchange (MIX) Market

Acting as a global, web-based, microfinance information platform, the Microfinance Information Exchange (MIX) Market has a goal to provide information on public and private funds that invest in microfinance, providing an important resource for those within the microfinance sector and the public at large. To date, the MIX Market maintains data on 1383 microfinance institutions, 103 investors and 182 partners. Read more about Microfinance Information Exchange (MIX) Market...

La Lega

Italy's largest umbrella group for cooperatives, La Lega promotes the interests of the cooperative sector at all levels of government, and conducts research to measure and influence public opinion about cooperatives. La Lega (or Legacoop) covers more than 17,000 cooperatives: approximately 5,000 worker co-ops, 3,000 agricultural co-ops, 2,000 consumer co-ops, 5,000 housing co-ops, 2,000 mixed-form co-ops, and hundreds of specialized co-ops in such fields as transportation and fishing (Smith 2001). Read more about La Lega...

Kiva (operates internationally)

Kiva aims to facilitate micro-lending between individuals in wealthy countries and social entrepreneurs in the developing world. Through its website, individuals can make loans for as little as $25 which are pooled to support business ventures. Kiva does this by partnering with micro-lenders abroad, which screen the businesses to which the lending dollars raised go. When the loan is repaid, a lender can choose to withdraw their funds or re-loan to a new business. To date, over 54,000 lenders have participated, with a repayment rate of over 99 percent. Read more about Kiva (operates internationally) ...

Japanese Consumers' Co-operative Union (English language site)

Japan's consumer cooperative movement—the world's largest—is composed of 572 member co-operatives with a combined individual membership of 22,016,000, or thirty percent of all Japanese households. Read more about Japanese Consumers' Co-operative Union (English language site)...

Grameen Family of Enterprises

In 2006, the Grameen made history, when together with founder Muhammad Yunus, it became the first community development financial institution ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize. But Grameen does not just do micro-lending through its bank. Today, Grameen social enterprises exist in many sectors, including clothing production, cellular telephone service, information technology services, rural education, and energy production. Read more about Grameen Family of Enterprises...

Grameen Bank

Grameen Bank is a pioneer in the microfinance field and is well known for practices that have since become common throughout the world, such as village lending circles where the group guarantees payment by each individual. Having started by lending $27 to 42 villagers in 1976, the GB to date has offered credit to 3.36 million borrowers and disbursed $4.27 billion in cumulative loans. It works in 44,636 villages, operates 1,229 branches, and employs nearly 12,000 people. Read more about Grameen Bank...

Fundación para la Educación Superior

FES was established in 1964 as a university foundation designed to mobilize funds for education and research. In 1975, the government recognized FES as a “commercial financing company,” which permitted it to seek resources in the capital market, make loans, and thereby accumulate capital. Soon thereafter, FES expanded its mission to include the promotion of social development activities, and it began investing its profits in social programs in six areas: health, education, economic and social development, children and youth, the environment, and civil society support. Read more about Fundación para la Educación Superior...