Carolin Schramm

Approaching the end of the BIF pilot - an update from the M&E team

Innovation
Results Measurement and Impact
9. Oct 2013

The objectives of BIF's Monitoring & Evaluation system are:

  • to learn more about the results of Inclusive Businesses, and the processes involved, so as to share this with others interested in this subject;
  • to learn more about the role and value of the Facility, so as to be able to report lessons from piloting this approach to catalysing Inclusive Businesses through use of donor funds;
  • to improve our own operations as we go, by responding to feedback and progress;
  • to be accountable to DFID for how public funds are spent.

During the last three years we have worked closely with the 40 long projects supported by the Facility and collected data at three different milestones:

  1. An initial Baseline, just before or at the start of service delivery
  2. A Progress Report, at completion of service delivery from the Facility
  3. An Update Report, completed 12 months after the Progress Report.

Combined with our own knowledge and research, we are now in the process of interpreting this wealth of information in order to generate analysis and lessons learnt that will be feeding into our final Portfolio Review. These findings will then form the backbone of the final BIF Report that will be published in December.

Some of the key questions that we have tried to answer are centred around the recurrent themes of BIF additionality, commercial viability and development impact:

  • How has project maturity evolved during the implementation of the inclusive business?
  • Which commercial objectives have been delivered the most since the beginning of BIF's intervention?
  • Which challenges has BIF been the most useful at addressing?
  • Have turnover growth expectations been realistic? By how much have projects tended to overestimate their year 1 turnover figures?
  • Is estimating a positive profit in year 1 of implementation a realistic target? What do the figures tell us?
  • How many households are the BIF projects expected to reach at the base of the pyramid? What are the projections for the next 5 years?

Slowly unraveling trends and findings has been hard work but very rewarding. We are looking forward to sharing the final report with you over the coming months.