"This report stems from a point of view shared by Toniic and Shell Foundation: that venture philanthropists and impact investors actively collaborating can increase the amount of impact investment capital into early-stage impact enterprises. The objective of this report is to provide a practical and user-friendly guide primarily for impact investors to encourage them to deploy their investment capital directly or indirectly (via financial intermediaries and funds) into impact enterprises at an earlier stage. In particular, we have targeted individual investors and family offices."

"This report summarizes a more comprehensive assessment undertaken in 2017 which examined the characteristics of women-led, small and growing businesses (SGBs) in Mexico. Aimed at understanding Mexico's current entrepreneurial ecosystem and the financial and non-financial barriers facing female entrepreneurs, the assessment offered recommendations for how different actors can support women entrepreneurs. Available to a wide audience as a learning report, this summary assessment contributes valuable insights into how a broader set of actors implementing services and programmes for women entrepreneurs can improve their support to women in their entrepreneurship endeavours in Mexico and beyond."

"We’ve written this guide for charities who seek to evaluate their work, or measure their impact. Measuring means using data and evidence, both quantitative and qualitative, to gain useful insights about your charity’s work. It’s about understanding whether your project or service made a difference in people’s lives. If yes, how so? If not, why not?

This guide follows on from our Theory of change in ten steps, which we want you to use as the basis of your measurement framework. We explain how to turn your theory of change into a plan for measurement, the five types of data you will need to pay attention to, and how to prioritise what to measure. Finally, we’ve included seven mini-guides below looking closer at specific aspects of evaluation."

"This report, designed for international development organizations, governments, and financial institutions, does the following: 1) highlights the key barriers facing women-led small enterprises across the developing world; 2) identifies how hidden gender and ethnic biases impact the growth of women-led businesses; 3) presents the results of a pilot case study in Guatemala inspired by a novel methodology, first applied to mortgage lending in the United States, that seeks to test for bias in bank-lending decisions for small enterprises; and 4) provides recommendations for policymakers and financial institutions on how this methodology can be applied in developing countries."

"This report was published as part of an interest in expanding knowledge and contribution to create a more enabling environment for inclusive business. The intentions of this are: firstly, to illustrate how the consideration of BoP communities exclusively through their income levels is limiting and can be misleading for practitioners; and secondly, to develop a series of recommendations to governments and public institutions on how to create an enabling environment for inclusive business models."

"This report by the Tony Elumelu Foundation focuses on the challenges and opportunities facing young agricultural entrepreneurs. It contains a comprehensive analysis of Africa's entrepreneurial ecosystem and discusses challenges and opportunities that African start-ups face along the agricultural value chain."

"Over the past several decades, U.S. venture capital (VC) firms have focused their attention and investment dollars in specialized regional hubs where high-tech entrepreneurship tends to flourish. As a result, "main street" businesses such as retail stores, consumer services, and other non-tech businesses typically find it incredibly difficult to secure equity funding. Yet, in recent years, crowdfunding (CF) has become a viable new source of funding for entrepreneurs. Using a longitudinal assessment of VC and CF at the national, regional, and sector levels in the USA, we demonstrate how the emergence of CF has unlocked new growth opportunities for main street entrepreneurs, particularly those located in underserviced funding regions. Likewise, we expose how CF augments national and regional funding patterns by re-allocating funding to industries that VCs typically do not fund. Lastly, we discuss the practical and theoretical implications of what appears to be a shifting venture funding regime, and shed light on CF's potential role in enhancing the resurgence of main street entrepreneurship across the USA."

"Over the course of twelve months in 2018, we worked on the ground with 15 entrepreneur support organizations (ESOs), interviewed more than 80 ESOs, and engaged more than 1,000 stakeholders, from entrepreneurs to investors to government leaders. We learned that the entrepreneur support sector in Africa has an opportunity for better communication and collaboration. ESOs are growing businesses - much like the startups they serve. We need to focus on resourcing and strengthening existing hubs, rather than creating new ones."

"Unlocking the Potential of Frontier Finance assesses key features of frontier finance impact investments and finds significant opportunity for making an impact in this sector. For impact investment in frontier finance to reach its full potential, investors require more clarity around the common features and performance of such transactions and strategies to address the challenges they face in the market. This research seeks to answer these questions by analyzing a database of 40 frontier finance transactions, 10 interviews, and a workshop discussion with 39 investors and other ecosystem players. Specifically, the report includes an overview of the frontier finance investment landscape, presents five in-depth case studies featuring frontier investment vehicles and transactions, and provides recommendations to build the market and overcome common challenges hindering the flow of additional capital into frontier markets."

"This toolbox is the result of a collaborative process between Practical Action and the Institute of Socio-Economic Research of the Bolivian Catholic University "San Pablo" (IISEC-UCB). The complementarity of visions and action areas reflects in an innovative proposal that aims to respond to a frequent and growing need by non governmental organizations: to measure the impact of gender-focused actions promoted by development projects, in this case productive."