Whole Foods has the Whole Planet Foundation which run campaigns and a micro-lending program to inject cash into needy communities on an international scale.
It is on the Ponoko blog (which regularly has terrific stuff for makers getting a business started) by Cassandra Glessner at SF Commonality, a San Francisco non-profit that helps small businesses with micro finance, micro-lending programs worth checking out.
Warren Buffett and Bill Gates should use more of their money to set up region-specific venture capital funds and micro-lending organizations with main goals not to get killer returns but to give entrepreneurs the ability to try out their ideas.
Some of the leading crowdfunders fall into different categories like Equity ( see my earlier post), Donation, Reward and Debt (a.k.a.micro finance and peer-to-peer lending).