"Impact-oriented accelerators, a relatively new type of entrepreneur support program, are proliferating as practitioners, philanthropic funders, and investors work to unlock the full potential of entrepreneurship-led economic development. These accelerators aspire to support entrepreneurs, in large part by driving investment into promising ventures that work in marginalized sectors and regions around the world. Given the opportunity costs of the human, organizational, and financial resources required to run accelerators, it is important to determine whether they are having this intended impact. To assess the effect of acceleration on outside equity investment, we analyze application and follow-up data from a matched sample of 1647 entrepreneurs who applied to 77 impact-oriented accelerators. Our main finding is promising. In the first follow-up year, accelerator program participants attract significantly more outside equity than their rejected counterparts. Further analysis suggests that this positive equity bump is not due to cherry picking obviously promising ventures during selection processes. Moreover, the effect is tied to the number of accelerated months in the follow-up year. Despite these promising observations, we find that the equity investment effect does not extend to ventures working in emerging markets, or to those with women on their founding teams. Thus, the benefits of accelerators for entrepreneurship-led development are not yet reaching the places and people that have the hardest time attracting capital on their own. We conclude the paper by outlining the challenges associated with extending the positive effects of acceleration into entrepreneurial domains that are most challenging from an economic development perspective."

"The Incubator for Agribusiness and Agroindustry at Bogor Agricultural University, Indonesia (IAA-IPB) assists during three stages in the incubation process:early incubation (mentoring creative ideas, assisting in evaluation of market prospects, defining and outsourcing technology needs);incubation (helping production begin); and post-graduation (consulting on business plan revision and facilitating access to financial resources and a market network for new products and new technology implementation).

The utmost attention must be paid to incubatees during both the selection process and the incubation period, in order to ensure that they grow and are successful. Their success is the success of the incubator itself. One-to-one interaction with the incubatees is necessary to understand their problems and special needs and to help them find solutions. In addition, incubators are advised to maintain relations with successful graduates. They will continue to need assistance, they will be able to assist the incubator by being role models to new incubatees, and they represent a potential source of income for the incubator through profit sharing or equity investment."

"This free guide will help social entrepreneurs better understand the complexities of setting up a social enterprise in eight ASEAN countries, the options that are available to them, and the pros and cons of different legal forms. By providing detailed information on different legal structures that social enterprises can employ this guide offers well informed advice on registering with ministries, the documentation that is required and the licenses and permits needed to carry out certain business activities. It outlines governance and regulatory obligations and provides guidance on the taxes that apply to such organisations and expenses that are tax deductible. Case studies are also included to illustrate how social enterprises have responded to specific challenges."

"Adapting from the Ground Up draws upon a growing body of research and projects on private sector adaptation. It shares examples from case studies of interventions in Cambodia, Nicaragua, Tajikistan, and Zimbabwe, which successfully catalyzed MSE investment in climate adaptation measures in the agriculture sector. The report also presents a number of shorter case studies from projects and initiatives in Benin, Cook Islands, Ethiopia, Honduras, India, Namibia, Rwanda, and Tanzania. The report also describes the different elements that policymakers need to take into account when designing policies and interventions to catalyze MSE investment in adaptation."

"This paper is intended to be a resource for development practitioners and evaluators who want to include a focus on gender impact when commissioning or conducting evaluations."

"The main focus of this study is to ascertain the impact of access to formal credit on enterprise performance. The study uses Nigerian Enterprise Surveys data for 2010 to construct a direct measure of credit constraint. From propensity score estimations, the results show that access to formal credit matters and has significant impact on enterprise performance indicators. Firms that are credit constrained have significantly lower output per worker, capital per worker, employment of labour and investment in fixed assets for expansion compared to firms that are not credit constrained. This is more pronounced for women-owned enterprises after adjusting for bias in the estimations and controlling for sampling weights. This suggests that one way to support the growth of enterprises in Nigeria is to make access to formal credit less stringent. Also, government and monetary authorities should support credit expansion policies for medium and small enterprises in Nigeria."

"Mercy Corps’ AgriFin Accelerate Program (AFA) is a $25 million, six-year initiative funded by the MasterCard Foundation to support private sector actors to develop, prototype and scale digitally-enabled services for smallholder farmers across Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia. AFA is intended to help partner banks, mobile network operators, agribusinesses and technology companies scale high impact services for at least one million farmers, driving 50% increases in smallholder income and productivity, while working to support all market actors to expand services to farmers through shared learning...In June 2018, AFA contracted the Dalberg Group to assess learnings across these engagements and conduct supplementary research on these youth pathways. The goal of this exercise was to support the development of AFA partners and to inform wider ecosystem growth through public learning."

"Globally, women's involvement in clean cooking value chains has been minimal. This is partly because of the multiple challenges faced by women that impede their capacity to effectively engage in the energy sector. To better discern gender-specific differences in involvement in the energy sector, the authors conducted a randomized trial in Kenya to compare sales performance of newly trained male and female improved cookstove entrepreneurs and to test the effects of an agency-based empowerment training on business activity. A total of 257 entrepreneurs completed either a 4-day entrepreneurial training (control) or a 4-day empowerment training (intervention) and were followed for nearly 8 months documenting business activity and sales. The empowerment training led to more than doubling of sales for both genders. In addition, participants in the intervention group were significantly more likely to demonstrate business commitment over time and nearly three times more likely to be higher sellers (relative risk = 2.7, 95% CI [1.4, 5.4]), controlling for gender and rural/urban locale. Women outsold men by a margin of nearly 3 to 1 and were more likely to continue to pursue leads despite limited sales. Nonactive participants (those selling 1 improved cookstove or less) were a larger percentage of the control group (72%) than the intervention group (50%), and more men were nonactive participants (65% of men) compared with women (56% of women).These data show that women can serve as active improved cookstove entrepreneurs in both urban and rural settings and that targeted agency-based empowerment training can significantly increase women's capacity to engage effectively within the improved cookstove value chain."

"The agribusiness incubator in the state of Andhra Pradesh in India is the result of a partnership between the Indian government and an international crop-research organization that is a member of CGIAR, a global partnership of organizations seeking a food-secure future. As the incubator has developed, it has become relatively independent of its founders, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and the Indian government’s Department of Science and Technology. From supporting small businesses that can bring new agricultural research and technology to market, ABI has become an incubator of incubators, and is now helping African incubators follow its model."

"This report presents a "state of play" for INGO (International Non-Government Organization) engagement in impact investing, based upon data emerging from the recently fielded INGO Impact Investing Network Survey. It includes an overview of current activities, case studies from members, and findings from group discussions around the key areas of strength and challenge.

The report outlines the data around INGOs' current approaches to making investments, receiving investments, providing technical assistance, and building the impact investing ecosystem. It then delves into some of the most important issues for INGOs, including internal capacity, organizational culture, measurement, and partnerships."