"The authors set out to document, understand and disseminate good practices in policies for social enterprises, and ultimately to contribute to the development of the sector in Latin America and globally. The book introduces a model of how to position the issue on the public agenda in a way that responds to the most urgent social needs of the country and the sector, building on existing local policies as well as those from other countries, and involving stakeholders in permanent dialogue. The Road to Travel, aimed at public policymakers and key sector players, includes 34 cases of best practices in public policy and a strategy to move faster to address our most intractable problems through a new economy."

"The Poverty Probability Index (PPI) is a comprehensive, contextually-sensitive poverty measurement tool to characterize households' asset ownership and probability of living below the poverty line. The PPI questionnaires are available for individual countries and are continuously updated."

"The Poverty Stoplight is a poverty measurement tool that seeks to activate the potential of families and communities to lift themselves out of poverty. Using a technology platform, it offers a self-assessment survey and intervention model that enables people to develop practical solutions to overcome their specific needs."

"This note provides a popular overview of why and how GIF forecasts and measures impact. GIF’s unique Practical Impact methodology is central to the way GIF pursues its mission. We hope this introduction to Practical Impact will help donors, investees, and the public to better understand how we work. We hope also that other development financiers and impact investors may be interested in learning how GIF has addressed the challenge of investing for impact in innovations."

"Most impact investors see their primary goal as finding and investing in enterprises that yield strong financial and social returns-a goal we share and support. But we worry this singular focus may miss the forest for the trees. In this discussion paper, we argue for a shift in focus-toward the goal of scaling entire industry sectors, in addition to individual firms."

"Micro, small and medium private and social enterprises (hereafter referred to as 'enterprise') are emerging as important players in enabling or delivering sustainable water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services. This area is highly dynamic, thus pointing to a need for recent consolidated evidence about the effectiveness, sustainability and quality of services provided by such enterprises. A synthesis of literature on small-scale sanitation entrepreneurs was conducted in 2008, and at that time reported that the "quality research was relatively scarce, and few good case studies were found" (Valfrey-Visser and Schaub-Jones 2008, p.4). This paper reviews literature over the five years since 2008, once again taking stock and examining the nature and quality of the evidence for private enterprise engagement across both sanitation and water sub-sectors. In particular, we review of the evidence concerning if and how poor households and communities are being supported."

"The Guide was developed by CDC and IFC with support from the Government of Canada. It is a practical "how to" step by step guide for fund managers on how to strengthen gender diversity within their own firms and incorporate a gender focus into investment operations. It combines learnings from CDC and IFC's experience with over 160 Fund Managers and draws on best practices with a series of case studies from stakeholders across the industry."

"This report sheds light on the opportunity for inclusive business leaders to leverage partnerships to overcome the challenges they face in seeking sustainability at scale. Findings are based on interviews with both entrepreneurial and corporate-led enterprises engaging with smallholder farmers in Kenya and South Africa."

"This report presents lessons learned from various models that public and private sector programs use to stimulate growth of agro-processing small and medium enterprises (SMEs) through linkages to larger firms in developing countries. The study considers the unique barriers that SMEs face and the market-driven approaches spurring SME growth by facilitating linkages to lead firms in challenging development contexts which might serve as a reference for policymakers, development practitioners, and private sector actors. The report presents approaches to successful, sustainable program design for public and private sector-led initiatives, in an effort to enrich the knowledge available to expand the opportunities for agro-processing, and to attract lead firms to partner with smaller ones."

"This paper identifies separate and unique pathways to profits among small businesses in South Africa that are exposed to marketing or finance training in a randomized control study. The marketing group achieves greater profits by adopting a growth focus on higher sales, greater investments in stock and materials, and hiring more employees. The finance group achieves similar profit gains but through an efficiency focus on lower costs. Both groups show significantly higher adoption of business practices related to their respective training program. Consistent with a growth focus, marketing/sales skills are significantly more beneficial to firm owners who ex ante have less exposure to different business contexts. In contrast and in line with an efficiency focus, entrepreneurs who have been running more established businesses prior to training benefit significantly more from finance/accounting skills."