"The GRI Standards help organizations’ understand their outward impacts: on the economy, environment, and society. This increases accountability and enhances transparency on their contribution to sustainable development. Organizations can either use the GRI Standards to prepare a sustainability report in accordance with the Standards. Or they can use selected Standards, or parts of their content, to report information for specific users or purposes, such as reporting their climate change impacts for their investors and consumers."
"This paper is part of the Compendium of Evidence on the Effectiveness of Innovation Policy Intervention. This paper examines publicly supported policies for entrepreneurship development. Entrepreneurship policies are directed to encouraging socially and economically productive activities by individuals acting independently in business. Their principal objective is to increase a level of entrepreneurial activity which is considered to be below the social optimum. Policies may be implemented directly to address entrepreneurs' needs e.g. business advice programmes or through broadcast methods such as education policy. We have attempted to locate and focus on evaluations that reported on additionality / net effect or that use methods of causal inference to determine the effectiveness and impacts of policy. While policies and programmes for entrepreneurship can be simplistically modelled as a series of inputs beginning with cultural change followed by general and then more specific skill development, it is hard nevertheless to assess impact or trace causality because of the difficulty of defining discrete units of input, the presence of confounding factors and the length of time over which effects can build."
"The Impact Investing Landscape in Latin America is a joint report by the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) and the The Association for Private Capital in Latin America (LAVCA). The 2018 edition of the report provides an updated, comprehensive look on the state of impact investing across Latin America. Using survey data from over 60 investors in the region, the report outlines trends in investment activity in 2016 and 2017, examines challenges for investors, and evaluates the future of impact investing in Latin America - where investors plan to deploy an additional US$2b in capital over the next two years."
"As the world continues to grapple with the lasting and uneven effects of the coronavirus crisis, this issue brief explores the impact investing community's ongoing commitment to building a resilient future. Specifically, this brief demonstrates how impact investors seek to implement strategies to strengthen both market and societal resilience to future crises. Based on interviews with 16 asset owners, asset managers, service providers, and social enterprises, this brief investigates the role of social equity in enabling that resilience and shares specific tactics impact investors have implemented or are considering implementing to address inequality."
"As the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, has spread globally, it has left in its wake acute health concerns compounded by economic devastation. The full effects of the pandemic and corresponding economic slowdown are still unfolding - yet already, impact investors' portfolios are experiencing constraints, and the need for further impact investment is rising sharply. To catalyze strategic flows of impact investment capital and position impact investors to support their current investees, the Response, Recovery, and Resilience Investment Coalition (R3 Coalition) launched in May 2020. This initiative represents a collaboration across impact investing networks. One critical component of this initiative is the delivery of market intelligence on financing needs and effective strategies to address those needs. This first brief intends to describe the current state of play for impact investors."
"In light of the recent changes to the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment codes, this research study seeks to understand how corporations in South Africa are approaching enterprise development. The research aims to shed light on enterprise development practices across South Africa’s corporate arena and to highlight areas of strength and innovation, as well as core challenge areas. The ultimate goal of this research is to drive more effective and impactful enterprise development practices. It aims to promote practices not only geared towards small business development and job creation, but also sustainable, values-based practices that enable transformative, socio-economically inclusive and environmentally friendly outcomes."
"A prioritized strategy for action that assists investors, stakeholders, and policy actors in directing their resources towards generating the greatest impact for entrepreneurs in South Africa."
"The Core Characteristics of Impact Investing define the baseline expectations of what it means to practice impact investing. Providing this level of clarity to the market will help investors understand what constitutes credible impact investing and the Core Characteristics serve as a reference point for investors to identify practical actions they can take to scale their practice with integrity."
"As governments from El Salvador to Kenya to India enact strict measures to halt the spread of the coronavirus, what can development organizations do to help micro and small businesses survive? Drawing from TechnoServe’s past experience working with entrepreneurs in times of crisis, as well as early learnings from the response to the coronavirus pandemic, we’ve put together this quick guide of ideas for supporting these enterprises."
"These interactive story dashboards provide information on the lending activities to agricultural SMEs and producer organizations by the Council on Smallholder Agricultural Finance (CSAF). CSAF consists of 13 private lenders that come together on a pre-competitive basis to share learning and develop industry standards to promote the healthy growth of the financial market serving small- and medium-enterprises (SMEs), including associations of smallholder farmers, in the agriculture sector."