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Even organizations that are well-intentioned and carry out an impact assessment can end up with unusable data due to implementing a poor methodology. For example, a review of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) found that many of their evaluations could not assess impact due to methodological shortcomings.^1,2 Not only were these projects not able to demonstrate any impact, they also wasted time and money. When developing a rigorous impact assessment methodology, it comes down to being an educated user. No methodology is flawless, but you must understand the effects of the decisions you make regarding methodology on the data you will collect.

Last week during our BoP Impact Assessment Workshop at the William Davidson Institute, we discussed some of these issues around measuring impact with participants from around the world and various fields including the private sector, non-profits and academia. Our main objective was to have participants leave the workshop with an action plan to bring back to their organizations on how to implement the BoP Impact Assessment Framework. During the workshop participants developed a strong understanding of the framework, performed a strategic analysis of their organization's impacts, as well as learned and applied key issues in developing and implementing a robust data collection strategy to their organization. This last aspect highlighted the importance of developing a rigorous methodology to collect impact data at the project level.

So how do you successfully collect impact data at the project level? You must carefully consider several issues around research design, content development, and a data collection process. If one of these components is not done well, then the integrity of the data can suffer.

When thinking about research design, there are a few key decisions to make.

• Will you use a comparison group? If not, will you be able to ensure that the impact you track is actually due to your venture and not something else such as a new law being passed? 
• How many data collection points will you use? If you want to show change over time, it is important to consider collecting data before the project affects your potential subjects and again after those affects are measurable. 
• How many people should you collect data from in order to be sure you can make conclusions about your data, i.e. will your data be statistically sound?

There are also multiple things to consider when developing the instrument you will use to collect data.

• What impacts do you think are the most important to measure? You want to ensure you don't burden your respondents with too many questions.  
• How are you going to administer the instrument? Using the telephone, mail, in-person, internet or a PDA to administer your survey all have implications on your response rate, and the resources that will be necessary. 
• Are your questions are reliable and valid? It is important that you ensure your questions are reliable in that they produce the same result when used repeatedly, and valid meaning that the questions measure what they were intended to measure.  
• Will you back-translate the instrument? Translating your instrument into the local language, and then back to the original language allows you to compare two different versions for discrepancies. 
• How will you pre-test the instrument? Will you use share the instrument with experts in the field for their feedback, will you test your survey's content and process with the target population?

Even if you develop a strong research design and survey instrument, you could end up with unusable data due to how it was collected. Some things to think though when developing your data collection process include:

• Who will collect the data? Your results may be questioned if your organization collects the data instead of a third party. If you use in-person interviews, the gender of the interviewer may influence the respondent's answers. 
• When should you collect the data? The time of the year, such as crop harvests may influence the responses. 
• Where should you collect data? The environment that you collect the information may also influence responses, such as having on-lookers while the survey is being conducted. 
• How will you ensure that the respondent's answers remain confidential? 
• How will you find the respondent again at later data collection points?

Despite these many considerations when developing a rigorous methodology to collect impact data at the project level, it isn't difficult. The key is understanding and carefully thinking through each of these issues to inform your decisions around your own methodology.

Footnotes:

¹Victoria, C.G. 1995. "A Systematic Review of UNICEF-Supported Evaluations and Studies, 1992-1993." Evaluation and Research Working Paper Series 3. United Nations Children's Fund, New York.

²Savedoff, W., R. Levine, et al. (2006). When Will We Ever Learn? Improving Lives Through Impact Evaluation. Evaluation Gap Working Group. Washington, DC, Center for Global Development.

The US Senate Chambers. A corporate board meeting. A new car.

Three seemingly random sentence fragments – right? Not to me.

These all share something in common – all are supposed to be grand, life-changing or at least out of the ordinary. Yet when you see the US Senate Chambers on an average day, they are half empty, mostly procedural and somewhat dispiriting for those political science majors out there (myself included).

A corporate board meeting, similarly, is nothing short of average. Under informed directors, over stressed presenters and all too often, dubious decision making. Average, or worse, if you ask me.

And while a new car may retain its smell for a few days, after a week, it just feels normal to drive.

So what does this have to do with me, and my travels in Kenya? Since its introduction in 2006, I have been obsessing over an innovative little cell phone service called M-PESA. Launched by Safaricom – Vodafone’s subsidiary in East Africa – the M-PESA service allows Safaricom customers to transfer phone credit wirelessly, through SMS.

Here’s a longer description of how it works – simply put, you SMS 100 shillings and a special code to your friend’s phone, and he will receive 100 shillings of credit.  What's more, you can link up with a bank or a merchant to withdraw that credit as cash.

It’s pretty revolutionary, because it allows anyone with a mobile phone to have a way to store cash, and transfer money.  For most who live at the bottom of the economic pyramid, M-PESA is close as one gets to a bank account – which we in the west tend to take for granted. I remember when M-PESA was launched; I wrote about it on NextBillion at the time, and updated readers regularly on the service’s progress. I was definitely an M-PESA geek – I thought the service was amazing.

Fast forward to this past Sunday. I am in the Gigiri section of Nairobi, an upscale, leafy neighborhood home to many embassies, constabularies, consulates and UN offices. Every weekend, a dedicated group of ultimate Frisbee players gather on a field inside the UN complex for a spirited, fast-paced game. An avid ultimate player myself, I jumped at the opportunity to play some disc in a new city – especially when it’s about 35 degrees back in New York right now!

Towards the end of the game, I asked around – was anyone going towards the south side of town, where I am staying? “Sorry, no man – we live around here.” “Dude, next week, I’m going that way – but not tonight.” Etc. Simple, and no worries, I thought – I’ll just call the same taxi that took me up here. He can come pick me up and what’s more, he already knows where I am.

Imagine my chagrin – and embarrassment – when I attempted to call the cab and got an error message on my phone: “You have insufficient funds to perform this action.” Oh no, I thought – I was going to have to ask one of these very nice strangers to use their phone for a minute. Not too big a deal, but embarrassing nonetheless – especially when you’re the new guy.

I turned to my right, where Mike – an Australian journalist and a helluva ultimate player – was drinking some water.

“Hey Mike,” I asked, “Could I borrow your phone a sec? I’m ashamed to admit it, but I’ve run out of credit on my phone.”

“Uh, sure.” Mike hesitated. “Do you have Safaricom, by chance?”

“Uh, yes.” This time, I hesitated. “Why?”

“Well mate, I can M-PESA you some credit, if you want.”

Lightbulbs! Soaring, orchestral music! Fireworks! I WAS ABOUT TO USE M-PESA. I could hardly contain my excitement, humongous bottom-of-the-pyramid nerd that I am. I tried to look cool. I think I failed, if Mike's raised eyebrows were any indication. Anyway, I gave Mike 100 KSH (about $1.33) and he sent me a SMS – next thing I knew, I had the cab on the way and a new experience under my belt.

Having known of M-PESA for years, I never thought my first experience with it would be so, well…mundane. But that’s my point. Just like the Senate, or a board meeting or a new car, this thing that I had held in such high esteem for so long had turned out to be rather ordinary. On the other hand, that’s the beauty of it – M-PESA is so simple (and profitable for Safaricom, to boot) that it is used by millions a day here in Kenya, and is being rolled out across East and Southern Africa.

And, to its credit, M-PESA got me home that night – can’t say THAT for the US Senate, now can you!?

Interested in learning more?  Check out this great article on M-PESA from MIT News detailing research conducted by Tavneet Suri and William Jack on the types of M-PESA transactions taking place in Kenya.

M-PESA is also being used by Bridge International Academies, a franchise-like network of low-cost, for-profit private schools.  Rather than deal with the hassles of payables and receivables, Bridge International's parents simply send school fees to the company via M-PESA - which keeps costs and delinquiencies down for the company and makes it easy on the parents.

Be sure to read Nathan's interview with Frontline:SMS's Ben Lyon, which digs deeper into the mobile money and mobile transfer issues.

At business school, we hear a lot about financial innovations that spur economic growth in developing countries. On paper, these ideas sound incredible, infallible, and a developed, prosperous world is just around the corner. But in practice, which ideas are really working and, just as importantly, can we really tell from the safe confines of a university?

This semester, one class at MIT Sloan - Financial Innovations in the Social Sector - is tackling these challenges head on. 20 students - half with a finance background and half with a development background - are studying some of the most difficult yet most compelling market-based solutions to poverty: the scalability of micro-insurance, the capital access challenge for SMEs, and understanding where the rubber meets the dirt road in creating carbon credit markets in developing countries.  At the end of the five week seminar, we head to Cambodia and Indonesia, where we will visit with companies implementing these ideas.

Finally, the students will spend two days in Jakarta with companies such as Allianz, which is pioneering a micro-insurance package throughout the region, and New Ventures' Indonesia chapter, which is looking at ways to attract more smart capital into the region for its portfolio of SMEs. The students will meet with all the stakeholders: the consumers, the organizations that provide goods and services, the government institutions that provide support and create a business environment, and the markets that enable efficient valuations and smooth transactions. Ultimately, we will walk away with a more sophisticated understand of the space and begin to create stronger linkages between these stakeholders.

You can follow all the Finnovators work at finnovation.tumblr.com and on twitter #finnovation. We would value the nextbillion.net community's feedback, ideas and thoughts as we work to make this topic a mainstay in all business school curricula.

In two recent posts I have talked about emerging business models for serving Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in banking and the recent clash between commercial and microfinance banks in their future competition for SMEs. On December 2009, the IFC released a SME Banking Knowledge Guide that, in my opinion, confirms the rise of SME Banking as an important tool in stimulating private sector development. I strongly believe that SME Banking represents the next frontier in BoP finance in terms of its social impact and the sophistication required for profitably serving this population. SME Banking will increasingly shift the boundaries of the finance market at the BoP level as two types of organizations, microfinance firms and commercial banks, fight to capture this market by taking recourse in their respective competitive advantages (as I briefly outlined here).

The SME Banking Knowledge Guide is a superb book that systematizes much of what I have said in my two previous posts and adds lots of interesting insights on top of them. Mainly directed towards practitioners, either from other development institutions or commercial banks, this reading is recommended to anyone who is vaguely interested in this aspect of finance for low-income markets.

Why are SMEs important? Why do they suffer lack of access to financing options?

SMEs are often defined on the basis of their sales (below $2.5 millions, for a small enterprise, and $10 millions, for a medium enterprise) or the number of employees (less the 250 people). It is estimated that 95% of the registered firms worldwide are SMEs (OECD, 2006). SMEs serve as a middle ground for the economy and are active at nearly every point in the value chain as producers, suppliers, distributors, retailers, and service providers, often allied with larger businesses. Furthermore, SMEs often drive innovation, spur economic growth and facilitate the provision of goods and services – above and beyond other economic actors (Barreiro, Hussels and Richards, 2009), thus significantly contributing to employment and GDP as well as the development of the private sector.

However, SMEs also face severe constraints in their growth due to the reduced access to markets, skills and capital (Beck, 2007). Lack of access to financing option is a consequence of the generalized perception from commercial banks that SMEs are risky and costly to serve (especially because they rarely have any collateral to pledge in the loan). As a result, SMEs usually have to rely on more expensive or unreliable informal sources of capital, hence struggling to make the investments they need to increase their productivity, enter new markets and/or hire more people. In this line, long-term debt would enable SMEs to invest in expansion without losing ownership, while short-term and working capital loans would help SMEs grow incrementally. Additionally, bank deposit and transaction products would improve operational efficiency and enable SMEs to outsource financial functions. This finance gap is not covered by microfinance institutions, because they lack the skills and expertise required to deal with such sophisticated clients.

(Figure from SME Banking Knowledge Guide. Original source: Ayyagari, Beck, and Demirgüç-Kunt, 2003)

What can commercial banks offer?

Commercial banks have traditionally viewed SMEs as a challenge because of their lack of collateral, information asymmetry and the higher costs of serving smaller transactions. All of these hindrances make, at least in theory, SMEs better suited to relationship lending methods. This implies that the SME banking market would be better served by small local banks that specialize in niche market segments and rely on “soft” information gathered through personal contact

Nonetheless, and as I explained in a previous post, in the last few years commercial banks’ profitability margins have fallen. This has encouraged them to start exploring SME banking as an alternative. As a result, their perception of the market potential in financing SMEs has radically changed. Currently, commercial banks perceive the SME sector as strategic (Beck, Demirgüç-Kunt, and Martinez Peria, 2008). Moreover, commercial banks are now starting to figure out exactly how to use their competitive advantages to successfully cater to this segment.

Therefore, the SME banking industry is currently an industry in transition. Those banks that have been successful so far in servicing SMEs have experienced Return over Assets (ROA) of 3%-6% in their SME operations compared with a bank-wide ROA between 1%-3% (IFC, 2007). This has been achieved by developing customized risk adjusted pricing models that are able to predict risk without fully reliable financial information by exploiting other credit scoring tools and statistical inputs. Moreover, commercial banks have improved their efficiency by using mass-market approaches and by adapting the IT and Management Information Systems (MIS) tools to use more effectively the information generated in the transaction.

More importantly, commercial banks have discovered that SME credits generates only part of the revenue (38%).The rest is divided between deposits (29%) and other products (32%) (Beck, Demirgüç-Kunt, and Martinez Peria, 2008). In other words, SME Banking is much more than SME lending. This approach greatly benefits SMEs as well. Deposit and savings products provide SMEs with basic financial management tools. Transactional products such as automatic payroll, payment collection, debit cards and currency exchanges will lower the cost of doing business for the SME. Commercial banks can also offer good advice to the SME related with producing reliable financial statements, developing business plans, and selecting appropriate financing products.

What value added does IFC’s SME Banking Knowledge Guide offer?

Apart from a detailed analysis of this market, IFC’s guide also offers a simple Do-It-Yourself framework for commercial banks to improve the operations and quality of their services targeted to SMEs. This framework is based on five stages of the banking value chain: (1) understanding the market, (2) developing products and services, (3) acquiring and screening clients, (4) serving clients, and (5) managing information and knowledge.

(Figure from SME Banking Knowledge Guide)

Additionally, for commercial banks that have not entered the market yet, but are thinking about doing so, IFC’s guide offers several lessons to take into account while still on the drawing board.

Question: What do you get when you mix equal parts Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy?

Answer: The ideal Indicorps Fellow.

I first learned of Indicorps through my Georgetown classmate, Neil Jain.  Neil quit his finance job on Wall Street to return to India after 15 years as an August 2008 Indicorps Fellow.  In India, Neil partnered with Indicorps-Ahmedabad to create a Young Professionals Service Initiative to encourage other young professionals to join him in serving the country.

Intrigued by Neil's posts home from India, I pushed to learn more.  I did, perusing their extensive web site and reading their up-to-date blog.  But it wasn't until late last year that I really learned the special sauce of Indicorps, during a meeting with its founder, Roopal Shah.

Over coffees in a crowded West Village coffee shop, Roopal shared her vision: to inspire a new generation of global Indian leaders through structured grassroots public service opportunities.  Hence the Gandhi + King + Kennedy:

Gandhi - Indicorps Fellows live with the poor, so as to fully engage and empathize.  They experience and develop "moral imagination" - the ability to see oneself in another's shoes - in spades.

King - Roopal is, to put it bluntly, building a social movement.  Inspired by King and others like him, Indicorps builds broad support for its work, one Fellow at a time.

Kennedy - Like the Peace Corps, which was started under Kennedy's watch, Indicorps leverages the immense and under-tapped talent of young, passionate volunteer Fellows, who live and work in low income communities for at least a year at a time.

How does this all relate back to BoP?  These Indicorps Fellows - exemplified by Neil - bring a wealth of private sector experience to what is traditionally considered a "development program" - but they manage not to lose their souls in the process.  This is the beauty of Indicorps.

Applications for the next set of Fellows - beginning in August 2010 - are due next week, March 1.  It is not too late to begin your application.  Think about it - could there be a better way to spend a year than by taking the best of Gandhi, King and Kennedy?

Were you unreasonable then?  If so, then likely you still are.  If not, then get with the program!  (Just kidding - but seriously - check this out.)

Thirty‐four young entrepreneurs, hailing from 19 countries and targeting issues ranging from the rehabilitation of former child soldiers in Liberia to the use of agricultural waste to produce energy in Bangladesh, will vie for twenty‐five spots in a ten‐week Boulder‐based incubator called the Unreasonable Institute. The mentor‐intensive Institute has developed an unusual way to involve the world in selecting its twenty‐five entrepreneurs while admitting them free of charge, testing their entrepreneurial ability, and covering its costs of operations.

It's an online platform called the Unreasonable Finalist Marketplace, where the 35 finalists in the Unreasonable Institute's selection process can showcase their ventures to the world. People from around the world then vote with their dollars on the most viable ventures for creating social and environmental impact. Beginning January 22, the first twenty five ventures to raise $6,500 on this marketplace are the ones selected to attend the Unreasonable Institute.

These 25 entrepreneurs will attend the Unreasonable Institute's inaugural incubation program between May 28 and August 7, 2010 in Boulder. They'll receive ten weeks of rigorous entrepreneurial skill training, access to seed capital, opportunities to pitch to over 200 investors and philanthropists, and mentorship from 50 proven entrepreneurs and investors like the former head of global brand marketing at Coca Cola and the Co‐Founder of Google.org. This incubation program, including room and board, costs the Unreasonable Institute $6,500 per entrepreneur.

"We have applicants from New York to Nigeria and we know $6,500 is not affordable to both demographics," explains Founding President Daniel Epstein. To ensure the programs affordability while recovering costs, the Unreasonable Institute team turned to the idea of "crowd‐sourcing" as modeled by Kickstarter. Kickstarter is an online platform for enterprising artists to raise funds for their early‐stage projects by soliciting small contributions from hundreds of sponsors.

Adopting this model enables the Unreasonable Institute to have its cake and eat it too. "We charge our entrepreneurs $6,500 without allowing them to pay it," says Epstein. "We instead ask them to demonstrate their entrepreneurial ability by galvanizing the financial support of hundreds of people through the Marketplace."

While ensuring free admittance and testing entrepreneurial mettle, the marketplace appears to favor those with connections to affluent relatives. "We call this the 'Rich Uncle Problem,'" says Tyler Hartung, Epstein's teammate and fellow Unreasonable Institute Co‐Founder. "A finalist from the United States with a wealthy uncle would be apt to convince him to donate the full $6,500 to her the day the marketplace opens," explains Hartung. "Her Ugandan competition probably doesn't have the same luxury."

To solve this problem, the Unreasonable Institute regulates how much a sponsor can give each week. The first week the marketplace is open, neither the American entrepreneur nor the Ugandan entrepreneur can receive more than $10 from any sponsor. The second week, the maximum they can receive from a sponsor is $50. The third week, the maximum is $100, and so on until the last two weeks when there's no maximum. "Not only does this marketplace level the playing field by making the Institute affordable to anyone, but we also believe it is the ultimate vetting process for our entrepreneurs."

The world gets to weigh in on which 25 entrepreneurs the Unreasonable Institute will incubate as they launch globally‐scalable ventures that could improve the lives of millions of people at the Unreasonable Marketplace; now open at www.unreasonablefinalists.org.

Ashoka publically launched the Globalizer website today, part of an exciting new initiative that will enable the world's leading social entrepreneurs to scale their businesses and reach new markets. In the first year of the Globilizer initiative, Ashoka will work with 25 selected social entrepreneurs to build their capacity and concertedly address the challenges of "going global." The website will become a dynamic platform for collaboration, knowledge dissemination, and key findings coming out of the program.

This initiative is made possible by the Essl Foundation, an Austrian family foundation. Bill Drayton, C.E.O. and Founder of Ashoka, is the 2010 winner of the Essl Social Prize which is the biggest prize for Social Entrepreneurs in the world at 1 million Euro (this prize currently represents the sole funding of the program). The Essls gave Ashoka the freedom (or mandate through another lens) to launch a crazy, ambitious new project that they have been dreaming of for years. Naturally, Bill wanted to build upon their successful business model and introduce a new program that would help their most promising fellows reach their potential, and pave the way for others while doing so.

The initiative has three immediate goals: 1) create a platform (website) for fellows to share their learnings; 2) build a tight community of social entrepreneurs; and 3) move the community of scalable social entrepreneurs forward by developing a deep pool of publically available knowledge. This is a significant investment in action-research that will help the development community understand how to enable social enterprises to go global. The contributions to the knowledge base and applicability to BoP entrepreneurs will be closely watched by NextBillion.

During a conference yesterday I heard from three of the 25 Ashoka Fellows chosen to take part in the Globalizer. My immediate impressions were that the individual projects were boldly innovative and unique. Caroline Casey of Ireland, for example, is changing the way businesses look at and deal with people with disabilities by building a network of "ability confident" companies and spurring the market to recognize the significant contributions this segment of the population makes (3.3 billion euro of spending power, for example). Gary Slutkin of the United States, on the other hand, is funneling his decades of knowledge around battling infectious diseases into an effort to eradicate urban violence by training former perpetrators to disrupt armed conflicts and educate communities.

During the first year (which began in October 2009), Ashoka will be working closely with these twenty-five Fellows to prepare their scaling strategies and pushing them to go global. Ashoka will also be mobilizing a network of supporters and partners to provide resources to help these Fellows grow their plans to fruition. In April, the 25 Fellows will convene in Vienna to meet with a panel of top-tier consultants, advisors and international partners. They will present their strategies, get personal feedback, and then emerge with a robust international scaling strategy that bears the seal of approval and support of leading global entrepreneurs.

We'll pay close attention to how this platform develops and report on NextBillion.

On behalf of the NextBillion Team, I'm happy to welcome seven development through enterprise professionals who will join the group of Staff Writers. Together with the current cohort of five, they will share their rich and diverse perspectives, enabling NextBillion to chronicle the development of this idea from the most relevant regions and industries.

Nilima, Josh, Heathers, Sriram, Diana and Tilak: Welcome! We look forward to your contributions and to working with you in the development of NextBillion and our field.

To our readers: Stay tuned for more announcements. They're on the way!  

Nilima Achwal (Ann Arbor, MI) is a Research Associate at the William Davidson Institute, where she conducts primary and secondary research and writes case studies related to business in emerging global economies. She is particularly interested in the economics of development and businesses that create meaningful social impact in developing countries. Read more about Nilima. 

Josh Cleveland (San Francisco, CA) is the Impact Programs Manager at Net Impact where he oversees the organization's programs focused on community, campus, and workplace change and hosts Net Impact's Issues in Depth call series. Read more about Josh. 

Heather Esper (Ann Arbor, MI) is a Research Associate at the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan. She is part of the Base of the Pyramid (BoP) Initiative team, which addresses the intersection of business strategy and poverty alleviation. Read more about Heather.

Heather Fleming (San Francisco, CA) is the CEO and co-founder of Catapult Design, a non-profit product design firm serving developing world markets. Catapult's clients are organizations working in impoverished communities around the world with design and technology needs, including: rural electrification, water purification and transport, food security, and health. Read more about Heather

Sriram Gutta (Bangalore, India) is part of the Operations Advisory team at Unitus India. He is currently working on the Ultra Poor Initiative (UPI) and provides support to partners in areas such as program design, project planning, and impact assessment, among others.Read more about Sriram.

Diana Hollmann (Cairo, Egypt) is a Mercator Fellow on International Affairs focusing on topics concerning the interface between business and development. In the course of the one-year fellowship, she works on issues related to the advancement of inclusive and sustainable entrepreneurship. Read more about Diana.

Tilak Mishra (Chennai, India) is a social entrepreneur in residence and an impact investor at IFMR Ventures, an asset management company that exists to ensure that every enterprise has complete access to financial services.  At IFMR Ventures, Tilak is working on building solutions that ensures India's rural and semi-urban youth have improved choices to completely access employability enhancing resources and opportunities. Read more about Tilak.

In a recent weekly roundup I highlighted an Oxfam "Brief for Business" (pdf) on their Poverty Footprint Methodology.   This methodology - a truly intelligent and comprehensive approach to "corporate social responsibility" is important for several reasons that I want to highlight, especially as more and more multinationals begin targeting the base of the pyramid segment with affordable products.

To me, the bottom line is that even as multinationals choose to seek out base of the pyramid customers with products to improve their lives, there is an equal responsibility (and opportunity for positive impact!) by ensuring that getting those products to poor people does not hurt or impoverish other people in the process. 

As examples from the Oxfam report hightlight, in ensuring this businesses may improve their operations all around, and increase their ability to sell products to the base of the pyramid.

The footprint analogy, borrowed from the use of the term for carbon and climate change, is one that I think will have greater efficacy with the corporate decision-makers who must enable any evaluation of their company's operations, then make changes. 

In my view a key weakness of many CSR efforts is that, if they relate to a company's core operations at all, they are cherry-picked according to pet interests or fads - or what a company would prefer to have the spotlight on to the exclusion of something else.  It's quite likely in fact that the business's social impacts that are most difficult to deal with will be ignored - because they can be.

The footprint concept itself emphasizes that multinationals must be comprehensive and inclusive when looking at their operations. The Oxfam methodology looks at supply  chains, of course, but also:

• Value chains including product distribution
• Macro-economic impact - how a company operates with society vis a vis its taxes, distribution of profits, employment, etc.
• Institutions and policy - how a company's interactions with government and civil society affect the poor
• Social implications of environmental policies
• How their product development and marketing affects a community's culture, health, and ability to obtain essential goods and services.

These are all obvious hallmarks of good corporate citizenship.  But when grouped together it becomes more clear how hollow it is to look at one area but not another.

But the footprint concept also gains increased power and currency because it can help a company understand the parts of its own operations into which it has  poor visibility.  Especially when companies are oriented around marketing to the base of the pyramid. 

As the Oxfam report reveals, when Unilever piloted a footprint study in Indonesia, they discovered they were employing twice as many distributors as they realized, most of whom were working part time.  This knowledge allowed them to hone  and improve their distribution. 

Meanwhile, a footprint analysis for Harian Kissan Bazaar forced the company to analyze its impacts and operations in terms of gender, whereupon they discovered that 70% of their customers and clients were women.

Understanding how purchasing practices impact base of the pyramid suppliers may lead to undersatnding of how to improve relationships, impact, and ultimately the supply chain itself. Similarly, understanding how company practices impact sub-contracted distributors might allow them to create happier, and more effective, distributors. 

It hasn't been until companies started looking at the base of the pyramid as potential customers that they realized they could design and sell new helpful products to them.  It's not until they look into all the aspects of their operations, including the ones they may not want to, that they'll understand how to make their operations better for all involved.

And if they don't... Oxfam's campaigning arm will probably point it out before too long. 

This year will see several gatherings and discussions around the role of the private sector and social enterprise in the development of Latin America; following the Miami Social Enterprise/ Social Venture Capital Conference, Granada, Nicaragua, will welcome the first ANDE Latin America Conference to discuss the role of small and growing businesses in Latin America's fight against poverty.

It's interesting to see such conferences taking place closer to where the action is, where entrepreneurs are working to get their ventures off the ground and where the challenges of poverty are most acute. There is yet a second reason that makes the Granada conference special, and that is its focus on collaboration and coordination among the organizations supporting the SGB movement in the region.

To be more specific, this will not be a conference open for discussion among entrepreneurs and investors/funders. Neither is it a high level venue, designed for the leaders of investment funds and technical assistance providers. Instead, it's designed to address the needs and challenges of organizations like those affiliated to ANDE, which share a common goal but face challenges making collaboration and cooperation happen on the ground. Several training modules and sessions on specific sectors and areas of interest will be available. The agenda is explicitly designed to make something happen and have a list of clear action items once the venue comes to an end.

Early registration expires this coming Friday. If your work revolves anywhere close to the role of enterprise markets in Latin America's development, register now.