September 28 - Microgrants - Joe Selvaggio

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Joe Selvaggio is a true local hero. After years of service from corporate boardrooms to homeless shelters, Selvaggio is now leading a non-profit group dedicated to offering micro grants to the public. The inspiration for MicroGrants came from the microgrant lending programs of 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus. But Selvaggio changed the investments in two ways: (1) the recipients are local to the area where donors live (the Twin Cities), and (2) the investments are grants, not loans. Selvaggio made these two changes because the untapped resource of donors who prefer to give locally was vast, and because the American lower-income population should be taught to accumulate wealth, not acquire debt.
Selvaggio has recruited 100 "investors" (donors) committed to give the MicroGrant Non-Profit Program a total of $400,000 per year. The funds enable Joe to write an average of seven grants of $1,000 per week, or $388,000 per year. He can do this because neither he nor his nonprofit volunteers take any salary. That means that the overhead is only 3 percent.
MicroGrant Non-Profit Program

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