Investors linked to a charity stand to receive millions of dollars when a company they supported in lending to the poor in India goes public next week.

The charity, Unitus, abruptly dismissed most of its staff this month, saying it had accomplished its mission of creating an avenue for private capital to flow into microloans. However, its for-profit arm, Unitus Equity Fund, lives on and stands to receive an estimated return of about $70.4 million on the $6 million in private funds it invested in SKS Microfinance of India over the past few years.

SKS’ initial public offering is a major event in the development of the microloan industry in India. With more than 1,600 offices and 17,000 staff, SKS is the largest Indian microlender and also the first to go public there. Many cite its success in using private capital for small-business loans—typically between $40 and $200—as proof that private investments can help alleviate poverty.

Indeed, that was one reason that Unitus founders gave for all but shuttering their organization earlier this month. “With $50 billion of microfinance capital available to more than 150 million of the world’s working poor…we feel the time is right for Unitus to seek out other transformative fields of endeavor,” Unitus chairman Joseph Grenny wrote in a July 14 letter to donors.

Unitus called itself a “microfinance accelerator” that used private donations to help build up SKS and other such lenders, while at the same time putting private-investment money to work funding the loans.

But as the SKS IPO nears, the potential return is raising questions about the ethics of combining charity and business—and the extent to which Unitus founders and board members may profit personally from their investments. Citing confidentiality, Unitus never publicly disclosed who the investors were in the Unitus Equity Fund.

Herb Bridge, co-chairman of Ben Bridge Jewelers in Seattle, Washington, said he has given $10,000 to Unitus, and the charity did not tell him it had created an equity fund that was investing in the microlenders that Unitus was assisting. “Whether for good or ill, I feel that lack of representation is the same as misrepresentation,” Bridge said.

The microfinance industry is struggling with the issue of how philanthropists should use donations to help for-profit microlenders. A New York organization focused on financial access for the poor questioned whether a Mexican microlender that went public in 2007 improperly used aid to enrich its investors.

“That dilemma is not only there in SKS and for organizations that Unitus is involved with, it is across our industry,” said Greg Chen, a representative for the Consultive Group to Assist the Poor, which authored a report on Mexican microlender Compartamos Banco. The report determined that Compartamos had not improperly used public aid to enrich investors.

Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, considered the founder of microfinance, has criticized the SKS IPO. “Microcredit should not be presented as a money-making opportunity. It is an opportunity to make an impact on poor people’s lives. An IPO gives a wrong message,” Yunus was quoted as saying by the Wall Street Journal.

The SKS offering is particularly important because India is the world’s largest microcredit market. If its IPO succeeds, others stand ready to go public.

Prior to and around the time of the investments in SKS, Unitus was raising money from other donors to help with the mission. It found many individuals and institutions willing to support the cause, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Boeing Co., Washington State Department of Commerce Director Rogers Weed, and Danny Ainge, general manager of the Boston Celtics basketball team. One of the largest donors, giving a total of $11.7 million, was the Omidyar Network, the charitable foundation of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. Omidyar also was an investor in Unitus Equity Fund, so it stands to share in the profit.

Matt Bannick, managing director at Omidyar Network, told the Puget Sound Business Journal he wasn’t sure how much his group would receive for the $5 million it invested in UEF.

Bannick also served on the Unitus board for several months, but resigned in May when “it was becoming increasingly apparent to me that management wanted to go in a different strategic direction,” he said. Bannick’s departure preceded the recent resignations of three other Unitus board members, one of whom said she left in protest over the decision to lay off the Unitus staff and reorganize.

UEF already has cashed out part of its holdings. Last July, it sold about $10 million worth of stock to another investor, keeping a minority stake in SKS, according to the SKS prospectus.