Mary Mulvihill

Here’s a neat idea, perhaps even an example of the developed industrial world learning from developing countries.

Outvesting.org — begun by  just a few weeks ago by James Corbett and John Keyes — has already raised €5,000 for an Irish start-up, no strings attached.  And all by simply taking small online donations of €50 from people happy, as they say themselves, to commit:

money to a business while expecting to get nothing in return, other than the satisfaction of giving a leg up to Irish entrepreneurs

If you’ve got a business idea, you have until Saturday (November 21) to apply.

So far, they’ve had over 40 applications, and counting, and it looks like they may go to an open online adjudication, which would be interesting to see.

Here’s the background, and the latest updates.

It’s not unlike the wonderful Kiva project, which likewise takes  small online donations, but in this case to lend to start-ups, projects and entrepreneurs in developing countries.

With Kiva, once your loan is repaid, the money can be reinvested in another project.  And you can give Kiva loans as gifts to friends too.

Perhaps the best known example of micro-financing is the Grameen Bank, established by Bangladeshi banker Muhammad Yunus, who won the 2006 Nobel Prize for economics for developing the concept of micro-credit.

. . . Which probably rules out Corbett and Keyes  for a Nobel prize!  But they are still taking donations, if you’d like to “outvest”.