This paper is based on work conducted by Imp-Act a three-year action-research programme aiming to improve the quality of microfinance services and their impact on poverty. Learning from the experiences of 30 microfinance organisations (MFOs) in four continents, Imp-Act is developing and...

Assessment of the poverty level of microfinance clients is important for both practitioners and donors. For practitioners, increased understanding of the target market and whether it is being reached can help in the design of financial services better suited to the needs of different groups of...

The paper describes and analyses the role of civil society in five conflict cases – Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Transnistria, Western Sahara and Israel/ Palestine. It evaluates the relative effectiveness of civil society organisations (CSOs) and assesses the potential and limits of CSO...

This note presents a framework for assessing social performance (social performance assessment SPA), and how this information can be used to inform decisions that affect both the social and financial performance of the microfinance institutions this we term social performance management, SPM....

All microfinance institutions (MFIs) have clients who decide to leave their programme. Clients may leave for positive reasons for example they might have outgrown the size of the loans that the MFI can offer and be graduating to formal sector finance. They may also leave for negative reasons,...

The paper draws on five case studies to explore potential benefits and barriers to horizontal networking to promote impact assessment of microfinance. The papers main aim is to stimulate further discussion of this issue. But some tentative conclusion are drawn about factors likely to contribute...