Publication database

This report looks into the state of the social enterprise sector in Thailand, showing a growing community of businesses operating in diverse industries from education and health to fisheries, agriculture and livestock. They are more likely to be led by women than traditional businesses and just over half earn all their income from commercial activities.

The AVPA Landscape for Social Investments in Africa report maps the diverse field of social investment across East, West and Southern Africa. It focuses on providers of social capital, their investment strategies, and opportunities for collaboration. In each of these regions, hundreds of institutions are deploying capital to achieve ambitious social and environmental goals.

Social Impact Investment (SII) is a strategy that seeks to solve key societal challenges. The study sets out the rationale behind and the definition of SII and analyses the different components of the SII ecosystem. It looks at trends and challenges in SII in the EU, highlights a number of successful SII market initiatives, and makes recommendations on potential EU-level measures.

This guide supports impact-driven investors in developing an investment strategy that accomplishes real-world change. The authors have reviewed existing research and synthesized the available evidence to offer practical recommendations on how to maximize impact. The guide is focused on the impact of the investor herself, as opposed to the impact investee companies create.

The report describes the current investing in impact landscape in Indonesia. Based on desktop research, interviews and survey data, it finds that a growing number of mainstream investors are investing in social enterprises. In a similar pattern, numerous entrepreneurs not being defined as social enterprises do have an important contribution to impact and the SDGs’ achievement. 

This report aims to capture characteristics of the impact investing sector in Latin America over the past two years, based on a sample of impact investors active in the region. Through institution-level and deal-level data shared by these investors, it gives a snapshot of where and how capital is being allocated and identifies challenges that the ecosystem faces. The report focuses on the region widely while taking a deeper dive into three of the region’s largest markets: Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico.

The strategic alignment between business and corporate foundations, impact funds, and accelerators shows enormous potential for achieving social impact. This report points out the four different ways these actors can align, such as a business alignment or an industry alignment, each with its strengths and weaknesses. 

The 2020 Annual Impact Investor Survey provides a comprehensive overview of the impact investing market. This edition captures data from 294 of the world’s leading impact investors who collectively manage USD 404 billion of impact investing assets, representing an important subset of the USD 715 billion global impact investing market. The report looks at respondents’ investment activity during 2019 and their plans for 2020, market developments over the past decade, and challenges facing the market going forward. Respondents also shared insights on how Covid-19 might affect their activities.

This issue brief summarizes initial evidence from the first phase of the crisis in March and April 2020 regarding the impact of Covid-19 on Small and Growing Businesses (SGBs) and the SGB support sector more broadly in emerging markets. It summarizes current risks, impacts, and needs so that organizations and individuals who support SGBs can better understand what is happening on the ground and most importantly, take action to design and implement more effective interventions.

The factsheet shortly explains the role of IFC in financing inclusive business endeavours. Describing untapped business opportunities among low-income communities, the article emphasizes the win-win of inclusive business models for economic growth and human development.