Publication database

The report starts by outlining the current state of impact measurement and management. It goes on to shed light on the BCtA’s member companies’ commitments to the SDGs, their adoption of the Inclusive Business model, their engagement with low-income populations in developing countries, and to highlight the main challenges faced by these organizations in measuring and managing impact. It also outlines how Inclusive Businesses can manage their impact on the Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP), leading to enhanced quality of life and increased living standards for their stakeholders.

Increasingly, development funding is directed to programmes aiming to make market systems more favourable for smallholders and low-income consumers of food. Assessing whether a programme indeed contributed to development outcomes is challenging. Building on real-world experiences with theory-based evaluation in inclusive business programmes, this IDS Bulletin discusses approaches and methods for meaningful impact evaluation. 

This report summarises the main elements to be taken into account to measure and manage impact throughout the investment strategy and the investment process, linking each phase to the relevant steps of the EVPA five-step framework. To clarify how the EVPA five-step process and other IMM initiatives are linked and complement each other, this publication also refers to different principles or standards throughout the investment journey, such as the Dimensions of impact of the Impact Management Project, the Operating Principles of Impact Management, the Principles of Social Value and the SDG Impact Standards.

The report also the enormous potential to invest for impact in public equity markets. According to the report, impact investing in private markets could be as large as $2.1 trillion in assets under management, but only a quarter of that, $505 billion, is clearly measured for its impact, both for development impact and financial returns. The publication includes trends in impact investing, survey results of investor practices, and 32 case stories from signatories to the Operating Principles for Impact Management on how they are implementing them.

The study identified and reviewed 36 cases of inclusive business models in aquaculture value chains in low-income countries. The team analysed the economic and social upgrading objectives of each of the models and how they led to, or inhibited, developmental outcomes. 

An increasing number of poor households are gaining access to financing for physical assets ranging from smartphones to solar panels. However, even as poor people increase their borrowing for these assets, their impact on people’s livelihoods - and how debt affects the benefits of asset ownership - remains poorly understood. CGAP has undertaken a comprehensive review of the available evidence to understand (i) how asset ownership can lead to improvements in well-being for poor households and (ii) whether obtaining an asset through a loan or lease as opposed to a transfer, grant, or outright purchase affects the benefits associated with ownership.

This evidence review assesses the impact of electricity on development outcome in emerging economies. It considers the evidence of impact in macroeconomic, microeconomic, social, and environmental areas to help investors maximise impact across investments in power.

This handbook provides investors, businesses and private
sector development practitioners with an overview of tools
and methods for effective and appropriately tailored data
collection for impact measurement and management. It
builds on the recognition that the methods of larger,
independent impact evaluations of, for example,
government-funded programmes rarely lend themselves
well to a private sector context. In reviewing select private
sector-relevant tools and methods, it draws out how such
tools can deliver impact insights while often feeding
valuable business intelligence back into companies.

Grow Asia is a unique multi-stakeholder partnership platform that brings together farmers, governments, the private sector, NGOs and other stakeholders in Southeast Asia to lift the productivity, profitability and environmental sustainability of smallholder agriculture in the region. This report outlines goals and key activities of Grow Asia in 2019.

This rapid evidence assessment examines and synthesises the evidence base on the development impact of DFI investment. The objective is to strengthen DFID’s understanding of the critical assumptions underpinning its private sector development (PSD) theory of change to inform future PSD programming decisions. In particular, this rapid evidence assessment looks at what the current evidence tells us about DFI investment impacts on: incomes access to goods and services; distributional impacts (specifically poverty, gender, youth and quality jobs).