"The purpose of this document is to provide an insider look at the application of the BalanceD-MERL approach in a program operating in a complex environment. The Women + Water Global Development Alliance is a five-year (2017-2022) collaboration among USAID, Gap, Inc., CARE, Water.org, the Institute for Sustainable Communities and the International Center for Research on Women. Together, these organizations are leveraging their complementary strengths to improve and sustain the health and well-being of women and communities touched by the apparel industry. The BalanceD-MERL consortium delivered a MERL strategy to the Alliance. In this document, the BalanceD-MERL consortium shares their experience of applying the approach and provides key takeaways from the application of the approach. The BalanceDMERL consortium also gives decision-makers, program implementers, and MERL practitioners action–items to undertake to enhance the effectiveness of this approach."

"Drawing on available academic literature and policy evaluation studies, the report aims to identify the impact of public support through equity instruments on firm performance, and puts forward main lessons on policy design and implementation. It employs a mixed- method approach based on evaluation synthesis (Edler at al. 2008)."

"Differences in management quality are an important contributor to productivity differences across countries. A key question is how to best improve poor management in developing countries. This paper tests two different approaches to improving management in Colombian auto parts firms. The first uses intensive and expensive one-on-one consulting, while the second draws on agricultural extension approaches to provide consulting to small groups of firms at approximately one-third of the cost of the individual approach. Both approaches lead to improvements in management practices of a similar magnitude (8-10 percentage points), so that the new group-based approach dominates on a cost-benefit basis. Moreover, the paper finds some evidence that the group-based intervention led to increases in firm size over the next three years, while the impacts on firm outcomes are smaller and statistically insignificant for the individual consulting. The results point to the potential of group-based approaches as a pathway to scaling up management improvements."

"Root Capital is excited to release our first multi-site impact study - Improving Rural Livelihoods: A Study of Four Guatemalan Coffee Cooperatives. As a complement to our ongoing social and environmental due diligence, this comprehensive study provides a more detailed picture of the impacts that our client enterprises have on the livelihoods of smallholder farmers and the environment. We also sought to answer the question: Does Root Capital's financing and training enable our clients to increase their impacts, and if so, how and to what extent?"

"To contribute to the debate with such context-specific knowledge and insights, NWO-WOTRO Science for Global Development commissioned a synthesis study. This study explored how a selection of research projects funded by the Food & Business (F&B) Research programme have directly or indirectly addressed key opportunities and constraints of sustainable inclusive business initiatives. The synthesis included 13 interdisciplinary research projects, which shared the long-term objective of contributing to improved food and nutrition security of marginalised and vulnerable groups. Based on this study, this paper presents new insights into the different business processes and innovations of, particularly, small-scale producers and entrepreneurs in the agri-business sectors of countries across sub-Saharan Africa and southeast Asia."

"This publication aims to provide insights into the why, how, and what of inclusive business to inspire companies that want to develop their own inclusive business model, and civil society and public partners facilitating include business in Africa. Hereto, the publication shares knowledge from both theory and practice and delves deeply into three inclusive business cases from East Africa: financial inclusion through mobile banking service M-Pesa in Kenya; Community Life Centres for inclusive healthcare in Kenya; and inclusive agribusiness and food security in Ethiopia. In addition, the publication presents insights from research on 2SCALE, an incubator programme that manages a portfolio of public-private partnerships. (PPPs) for inclusive business in agri-food sectors."

"The publication discusses the market potentials, constraints, and necessary policy instruments for an enabling environment for inclusive business. Included in the report are: a profile of inclusive business initiatives, the market size of the base of the pyramid, and an analysis of each inclusive business ecosystem in every Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) economy. There is also a recommended a framework to guide future work on inclusive business under the APEC regional economic cooperation agenda."

"We seek to show how evidence-based teaching for management affects the success of firms by way of changing managers’ actions. We conducted a randomized controlled field intervention with a sample of 100 small business owners in Kampala, Uganda. The intervention increased personal initiative behavior and entrepreneurial success over a 12-month period after the intervention. An increase in personal initiative behavior was responsible for the increase of entrepreneurial success (full mediation). Thus, the training led to an entrepreneurial mind-set and to an active approach toward entrepreneurial tasks. This particular management training was successful at improving knowledge and intangible skills that translated into successful organisational medium- to long-run outcomes for small businesses."

"This study explores how the social entrepreneurship ecosystem can unite to develop an action plan on gender lens incubation and investing for enterprises focused on the low income market segment in India. It takes an international perspective with a geographical focus on India an emerging leader in innovation for the bottom of the pyramid (BOP) and is supported by examples of such innovative high impact, sustainable enterprises."

"I present a model of financing social enterprises to delineate the role of impact investors relative to "pure" philanthropists. I characterize the optimal scale and structure of a social enterprise when financed by grants and when financed by investments. The analysis yields two heuristics to guide impact investors. First, investments allow a financier to discipline inefficient spending. Second, investments may enable a social enterprise to exploit new opportunities for profit and may increase the enterprise's scale relative to when grant financed. I quantify these heuristics for the case of Husk Power, a social enterprise that has received impact investment."