"This report summarizes the results of a survey that the Fate Foundation in partnership with Budgit Nigeria designed. It was disseminated to better understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Nigerian Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) with the goal of engaging relevant stakeholders within the entrepreneurship ecosystem to solutions and interventions to support Nigerian MSMEs during and post COVID-19. The survey was targeted at micro, small and medium businesses across the 36 states in Nigeria including the FCT. This report also provides in-depth recommendations for government, enterprise support organizations, private and development sector stakeholders on policy and program design as well as implementation approaches."

"This study evaluates the impact of business-development-support programs (credit, training, and a combination of both) on the performance of micro- and small enterprises (MSEs) in Ethiopia. Using 2015 Ethiopian urban survey data and employing endogenous-switching regressions for multiple treatments, we document a positive and significant effect of credit, training, and a combination of training and credit on MSEs. Our results highlight the heterogeneity in treatment effects between women- and men-owned MSEs: women-owned businesses do not benefit from access to treatments. Our results suggest that improving the performance of MSEs requires fine-tuned interventions that meet the specific needs of men and women who own small businesses rather than one-size-fits-all programs."

"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."

"This primer provides family enterprises with clear explanations of the "why," "how," and "what" of impact investing. The following pages will illuminate the diversity of the impact investing marketplace as it exists today, and provide families with a basic understanding of how they can start making more impact investments more effectively."

"A commonly held belief among investors is that impact investing-adding environmental, social or governance criteria to the investment selection process-will require a trade-off in performance. Though this may have been true in the early days of impact investing, the space has evolved significantly in the last decade.
In this paper, we will evaluate current impact investing by examining:
- What impact investing is and how it has evolved to be a viable investment approach
- How investors can maintain returns in their portfolios while investing for impact
- How impact investing can be used to identify risks and opportunities in the market
- Historical returns from a range of impact investments
- How investors can start accessing the impact investing marketplace today"

"Impact assessment is a key component of managing an impact investment portfolio, and many investors today are building methodologies that bring value
beyond simply reporting outcomes.

For many investors, the impact goal is the common thread across a portfolio of various sector, geography and instrument types and this diversification can make choosing an impact assessment methodology challenging. As such, the process for developing a methodology is often an iterative one, refined with experience and data over time.

To help inform that iterative process, this research presents sixty-eight case studies from twenty-one leading impact investors that share best practice and
debated viewpoints on impact assessment along the investment process."

"Impact due diligence creates value for a broad range of stakeholders across the impact investing ecosystem, including impact investors, investees and the field at large. Key benefits include fostering internal alignment around intended impacts and priorities, deepening understanding of investees’ activities, supporting the construction of more positively impactful portfolios, improving investor and investees’ ability to communicate impact, strengthening relationships between investees and investors, and increasing firms’ ability to attract additional capital. In combination, the benefits of widespread adoption of impact due diligence should attract additional capital to the field and thereby foster the formation of more inclusive and sustainable financial markets."Impact Due Diligence: Emerging Best Practices" is the first of two reports intended to elevate the practice of impact due diligence."

"This evaluation assesses the impact of International Finance Corporation's (IFC's) Business License Simplification Project in the municipality of Lima, Peru. It reviews two previous evaluations sponsored by IFC and adds new evidence. Under the project, IFC's Foreign Investment Advisory Services (FIAS) worked with the municipality of Lima to reform the administrative process for obtaining a business license in Cercado de Lima, one of 44 districts that comprise metropolitan Lima. According to the municipality, 64 percent of the businesses in this district lacked a business license in 2005, and most of them were microenterprises. The present evaluation conducted an independent review of previous studies, collected additional data, verified the previous findings, and placed the findings in the context of related studies and evaluations. The goal was to take stock of the results, collect and use other evidence, and draw lessons for future IFC and World Bank operations."

"The objective of the study was to rigorously evaluate SME programs in four Latin American countries Mexico, Chile, Colombia and Peru to gain insights into whether SME programs work, which programs perform better than others, and why. This report should be of interest to country governments, policymakers with responsibilities for SMEs, local researchers and the private sector in the region, as well as World Bank staff and bilateral donors."

"This paper investigates the impact of investment in human capital (off-the-job training in short term) on productivity of the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) by using Propensity Score Matching (PSM) method with dynamic approach. The paper employs the data from two surveys on the SMEs in Vietnam in the year of 2009 and 2011 that provide detailed information about training and firm characteristics. The results found that training has significantly positive impact on the productivity of household business, but there is no evidence on the impact of training on productivity of the firms in formal sector in the short run; and there is no evidence on the impact of training activities on productivity in the medium run (one-or-two-year after training) for both household business and formal enterprises. Besides, qualitative approach shall be conducted to provide more description on training efficiencies in some specific cases."