Azure is a global combined financing initiative led by our member, Catholic Relief Services (CRS), to expand and rehabilitate water supply services.
"There is growing evidence that the growth of small and growing businesses (SGBs) can be spurred by business development services (BDS). But how BDS is provided is critical to its success. Five fundamental considerations, acronymized as SCALE, have emerged that drive effectiveness. This report shows that even quite simple changes of approach can yield significant benefits to entrepreneurial growth. Together with an accompanying toolkit, it offers both BDS providers and funders guidance on how to implement dimensions of SCALE, proven to increase effectiveness, and as a result, boost SGBs revenues and job creation."
Azure es una iniciativa global de financiamiento combinada liderada por nuestro miembro, Catholic Relief Services (CRS), para ampliar y rehabilitar los servicios de suministro de agua.
"Dismantling and shifting power structures is key for achieving meaningful social impact. For far too long, funders have had significant control over social impact organizations: what they focus on, how they allocate resources, and how they measure their own success. This control contributes to ongoing inequity and impedes progress. This report seeks to contribute to those solutions by beginning to address two essential questions: Who has power to define success?, and, Who should have power to define success? Guided by this frame of reference, we conducted a review of existing literature, a series of 22 interviews, and a survey of 409 nonprofit leaders, social innovators, and philanthropic funders to understand how philanthropy and social innovators measure success. We focused on the challenges faced specifically by Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) leaders. Across these three methods, we sought to understand four key questions: 1. Who has power to define vision, mission, and metrics? 2. What metrics are collected and how are they used? 3. What effect do metrics have on BIPOC leaders? 4. How can we create more equitable funding streams?"
"The report delves into micro and small women entrepreneurs’ credit journey and explores demand and supply-side factors. The study shares insights on credit requirements, experiences, challenges, and credit success determinants for individual and collective women-led enterprises. This report also identifies five key personas of female borrowers. It shares the supply-side experiences of bankers and other organizations who directly or indirectly lend to women entrepreneurs. It shares some novel methods and good practices supply-side stakeholders implement to mitigate and distribute credit risk. Ultimately, it provides key recommendations to enhance access to credit for women entrepreneurs."
"The report highlights the struggle of Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in measuring and communicating their contributions to climate adaptation and resilience, owing to complexity, cost, and the inadequacy of existing metrics. This leads to a gap in understanding the impact of their efforts. The study aims to identify solutions and principles to better measure climate resilience and adaptation in MSMEs, guided by the Climate Capital Network's Metrics and Measurement Working Group. It aims to identify the challenges faced by MSMEs in measuring climate adaptation and resilience, assessing the relevance of metrics for investors, and outlining comprehensive principles to gauge these aspects effectively. It stresses the complexity and multifaceted nature of climate resilience and adaptation. They highlight the discrepancy and complexity among existing indicator frameworks, hindering their usability and comparability. MSMEs face hurdles in accessing and utilizing these metrics due to cost, complexity, and limited visibility compared to larger enterprises. The study identifies ten patterns crucial for measuring climate resilience and adaptation, emphasizing social impact, environmental conditions, financial considerations, risk management, and governance mechanisms. Finally, it emphasizes the need for flexible, comprehensive, and accessible metrics to facilitate investor understanding and encourage private sector investment in climate adaptation and resilience solutions. There's a call for clearer, standardized, and practical metrics supported by case studies to guide MSMEs in demonstrating their impact effectively to potential investors. This comprehensive approach aims to bridge the gap between the desire for climate resilience investments and the challenge of measuring their impact."