Forging Ahead: Early Lessons

Outlines outcomes and lessons of the Scale Academy for Microenterprise Development's operational grants, training, and technical support for microenterprise organizations. Examines grantees' progress in and strategies for expanding services sustainably

Capital Access for Women: Profile and Analysis of U.S. Best Practice Programs

Examines expert-identified best and promising practices in capital access programs for women among nonprofits, private equity investment groups, and banks. Analyzes factors for success and constraints women entrepreneurs face, and suggests improvements

U.S. Microfinance: Small Loans, Big Results

Accion's 2012 microTracker study highlights the critical role that U.S. small businesses play in building our economy. Conducted in partnership with the Aspen Institute and California microlender Opportunity Fund, the study takes a rigorous look at microloan outcomes for loans disbursed in 2010. Key findings point to microloan recipients contributing to local economies in three key areas: job creation, business sustainability and growth, and income generation

Training and technical assistance for micro-enterprise

School of Managemen

Enhancing Employment for Low-Income Women

This paper highlights key findings and lessons learned about the performance of nine social purpose businesses that received support from CFWED in 2002 and 2003, and about the outcomes experienced by the individuals who worked for these businesses. It reviews results of two years of data on nine businesses, focusing on key accomplishments and challenges

Bolivia during the global crisis 1998-2004: towards a ‘macroeconomics of microfinance

The macroeconomic role of microfinance appears to have varied enormously between country cases, as notably exposed by the recent wave of macro-economic crises. For example, in Indonesia in the late 1990s microfinance appears to have played a notably counter-cyclical role, whereas in Bolivia, the main focus of this paper, its role was in most cases to intensify rather than restrain the crisis. We find part of the explanation for this in the behaviour of government towards microfinance (much more conciliatory towards defaulting debtors in the Bolivian case) and in the structure of demand (unfavourable, in Bolivia, to the distribution and service sector which is the main market for microenterprise). However, closer examination of the Bolivian case suggests that institutional design also played an important role. In particular, those organisations which provided savings, training and quasi-insurance services bucked the trend of rising default rates and falling lending through the crisis and did particularly well, whereas the new breed of consumer-credit microfinance organisations did particularly badly and in several cases went out of business. This experience suggests,in particular, that it may be appropriate to call into question the fashionable´ minimalist´ (credit-only) model of microfinance, as certainly in Bolivia it was principally the credit-plus institutions which proved more financially disciplined and more resilient to crisis

Asset Building in Low-income Communities of Color, Part 2

Examines practices and policies in states not ranked highly for promoting asset building in large communities of color. Compares factors viewed as supportive of asset accumulation as well as promising practices with those in states ranked highly

Comments to Usda on Rural Microentrepreneur Assistance Program

Comments to USDA Rural Development Agency regarding the development of administrative rules for the Rural Microentrepreneur Assistance Program authorized by the 2008 Farm Bill as submitted during USDA Listening MeetingRoom 107-A Whitten Building, U. S. Department of Agriculture, 12th and Jefferson Drive SW, Washington D.C. on January 26, 2009.�

Donors' Support for Microcredit as Social Enterprise: A Critial Reappraisal

microfinance, microcredit, poverty, microenterprises, donor assistance, aid effectiveness

Small business development: an overview

Small business ; Community development