FINCA actively engages businesses in mutually beneficial strategic alliances. Through these relationships, FINCA leverages its strong brand recognition, global customer base, deep customer relationships, and detailed client knowledge with the resources, technology and expertise of private companies. FINCA benefits from improved operations, expanded service offerings and deeper client impact; companies that work with FINCA enjoy a unique way of demonstrating good corporate citizenship. Benefits to these companies include:

• Enhanced public visibility and brand equity
• Increased sales in emerging markets
• Improved employee loyalty and satisfaction
• Demonstrated good corporate citizenship

To discuss ways that your company could work with FINCA, please write Bob Price at bprice@villagebanking.org or call him at 202.682.1510, ext. 264. Some of the avenues FINCA offers include: Marketing Relationships to Reach Emerging Consumers The self-employed poor in developing countries are the sleeping giant of the global economy. FINCA’s Village Bankers comprise a network of hundreds of thousands of people from a huge emerging consumer market. FINCA’s network of Village Banks and entrepreneurs offers a valuable delivery channel to reach this market.

• AIG: In partnership with AIG, FINCA provides hundreds of thousands of clients with credit-life insurance. The coverage ensures that the death of a Village Bank member does not incur hardship on the Village Bank or on the family of the deceased. The balance of the client’s loan is paid off, and a cash payout is made to family members. With a  decade of experience in working together, FINCA and AIG are exploring ways to bring other demand-driven products to clients such as health insurance and asset insurance.

• Visa: Card-based payment solutions are more efficient than handling cash or issuing checks. They lower the costs of processing loans, provide microfinance clients more secure access to their loan capital, and increase the transparency of financial transactions. FINCA is working with Visa to deliver card-based payment solutions to poor women throughout our network. Together, Visa and FINCA are demonstrating leadership in providing better banking services to low-income clients.

Philanthropic Support
Supporting programs and events – whether through monetary grants, in-kind donations (e.g., pro-bono legal services) or cause-related marketing – can help FINCA defray significant costs and provide corporations a way to build brand equity.

• Denver Fabrics donates 100% of the value of the sales of remnant fabric to FINCA, providing thousands of dollars in unrestricted funding every year and enhancing Denver Fabrics’ reputation as a merchant with a social vision. To purchase remnants from Denver Fabrics, please visit their store in Littleton, Colorado.
  
  
• British Petroleum: Poor communities often experience a short-term boost to their economies when multinational corporations develop infrastructure projects, only to fall back into poverty once the project is complete. The Baku-Tiblisi-Ceyhan Company (BTC), BP Exploration Limited and FINCA Azerbaijan partnered to create hundreds of Village Banks to provide credit services to poor women along the newly built Baku-Tiblisi pipeline, ensuring that thousands of micro-entrepreneurs continue to have access to life-improving financial services long after the project is complete. 

FINCA offers opportunities to sponsor publications that reach tens of thousands of its core supporters or to underwrite special events ranging from small “friend-raisers” to elegant galas. Workplace Giving Many companies encourage employee giving and, often, match employee gifts. For example,  Visa’s Employee Giving Campaign has raised more than $100,000 for FINCA since 2003 through a generous employee matching program. Why not give your employees the opportunity to support Village Banking in a similar manner? Matching gift programs build employee pride, demonstrating that companies support their employees' philanthropic choices. FINCA can help your company support, or launch, your employee giving campaign by offering its “Tools of Hope” photo exhibit for display in a lobby or high foot-traffic area. Or why not host one of our experts as a guest speaker, and raise employee awareness of, and interest in, microfinance as a tool for social change?

For more information about Workplace Giving, please contact Bob Price at bprice@villagebanking.org, or by dialing 202.682.1510, ext. 264.