"A study from Zeppelin University and Siemens Stiftung provides for the first time data that evaluates the ability of social enterprises to satisfy the basic needs of poor populations. Focusing on Colombia, Mexico, Kenya and South Africa, the dynamics in the public, private, and third sectors were examined, and to what extent these influence the activities of social enterprises. The study includes concrete recommendations on how to increase the contribution of social enterprises to poverty alleviation."

"This paper provides a review of the profiles of the subsistence entrepreneurs and their constraints, and the landscape of current entrepreneurship programs and the evidence on impacts, and discusses the potential role of public policies for the livelihoods of subsistence entrepreneurs. Worldwide over a half of workers are self-employed, but a significant fraction of these self-employed jobs are of low productivity subsistence entrepreneurs. The focus of the entrepreneurship programs to support these self-employed in poverty is to improve their livelihoods rather than promoting cutting-edge innovation and business growth. Evidence of successful programs is limited and program designs often seem ill suited to the needs and characteristics of these subsistence entrepreneurs. Given the market failures faced by subsistence entrepreneurs, interventions that complement safety net programs with well-targeted support to promote productive self-employment may hold some promise."

"Humanitarian aid is insufficient to support the unprecedented numbers of fellow human beings who are struggling as refugees, migrants, or modern-day slaves. In this Social Entrepreneurship at the Margins report, Miller Center illustrates the clear and urgent need for bottom-up, enterprise level approaches, and highlights organizations that are already addressing the needs of these groups in innovative ways. This report highlights the efforts of Refugee Investment Network (RIN) and other innovators to bridge these gaps and invites other stakeholders to collaboratively build sustainable solutions for the growing global challenges facing refugees, migrants, and human trafficking survivors."

"The current global crisis of economic exclusion and inequity has millions of people in poverty with limited opportunities to escape. The questions of how markets work, and who they work for, have never been more pressing.

Truly inclusive markets lead to expanded opportunity for more broadly shared prosperity, especially for those facing the greatest barriers. With support from The Rockefeller Foundation, we analyzed historical cases where such inclusive transformations actually occurred in order to understand the ways in which they were achieved. Using these insights, we offer practical recommendations for funders and intermediaries seeking to enable more of these shifts in the future."

"Enterprises seeking to achieve both impact and financial returns have worked hard for many years to deliver critical goods and services to those living at the bottom of the pyramid (BOP). While these efforts have clearly had tremendous impact helping large numbers of very poor people, it remains unclear how deeply down into the BOP we as a field are reaching.

Are these enterprises consistently reaching people living on $8 a day? How about $4, or $2, or less? Given the lack of good data, we really do not know. And yet we need to. In order to understand how to reach deeply down the pyramid, we need to understand who is successfully doing so. In order to know when we should subsidize for-profit enterprises to get them to reach lower, we need a better understanding of the “natural” limits to their current reach.

This report was developed jointly by Monitor Deloitte, the MacArthur Foundation, the Omidyar Network, and the Rockefeller Foundation to help provide transparency and guidance to advance the broader field of funding for businesses serving the deep BOP."

"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."

"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."

"With more than a quarter of the Philippines' 100 million-strong population living below the poverty line, efforts to tackle poverty and improve living, working and health conditions must be stepped up if the populous Southeast Asian nation is to achieve its Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) commitments by 2030.

This publication aims to demonstrate how Inclusive Business can be engaged in the Philippines to contribute to achieving national development priorities and the SDGs -and how governments and other stakeholders can create an environment in which such business models thrive and reach scale."

"Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) are uniquely positioned to address the troubling trend of rising wealth and income inequality in the United States by focusing on the creation of higher quality jobs. To move toward a reality where quality jobs are the standard- not the exception-CDFIs must build consensus around a common definition of a quality job, undertake practical efforts to foster the creation of quality jobs, and measure results to understand what works.

This discussion paper seeks to answer two important questions at the center of Community Development Financial Institutions' (CDFIs) efforts to create quality jobs: what is a quality job, and how can CDFIs measure job quality?"