Most microfinance institutions (MFIs) have a social mission. They may seek to reduce poverty, to reach people excluded from financial services, to empower women or to promote community solidarity. Social performance is the effective translation of an institution's social mission into practice;...

QUIP (Qualitative in-depth individual impact assessment protocol) is a practical method to help managers of microfinance institutions (MFIs) better understand their clients through market research or impact assessment. Most managers would like to know who is benefiting and who is losing out from...

This Practice Note discusses how microfinance institutions (MFIs) can cost-effectively monitor and improve their social performance. By monitoring, we refer to regular, systematic and on-going collection of timely and appropriate information that helps the staff and clients of an organization to...

Most microfinance institutions (MFIs) have a social mission. They may aim to reduce poverty, to reach people excluded from financial services, to empower women or to promote community solidarity. This Practice Note is mainly intended for staff of MFIs who are trying to improve their...

Indicators are criteria or measures against which changes can be assessed. Microfinance institutions (MFIs) need to use a variety of financial and social indicators, to track both their financial and social performance and the impacts they are having on their intended beneficiaries. There is a...

Microfinance organisations (MFOs) collect various types of information from their clients. However, it is often the case that this information is not used effectively to enable the MFO to better understand its clients and respond to their needs. The idea of the feedback loop is that this...

In order to know whether they are achieving their social goals and how to manage for social performance microfinance institutions (MFIs) need to find out: 1) Who uses the programme's products and services? Who does the programme exclude? 2) Why and when do clients leave the programme or fail to...

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...