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Practitioners are key to many of the strategies for sustainability described in Opening Opportunities, Building Ownership: Fulfilling the Promise of Microenterprise in the United States.
In fact, the eight directions detailed in the publication’s concluding chapter specify a number of activities that practitioners should undertake to build a more sustainable future, and to demonstrate and enhance their value to funders and investors. FIELD offers three resources to help practitioners along that path: an on-line resource bank, an action planning guide, and practitioner training opportunities.
On-Line Resource Bank
To help practitioners move forward on the directions they consider most important to their organization, FIELD has developed an on-line resource bank with information relevant to each of the eight directions. The bank includes an array of resources: publications with best practice information, toolkits, training curricula, Web sites and more. Most resources are available free and are accessible via easy-to-use hyperlinks. To make finding appropriate tools and resources easy, we have organized them by direction. To see what’s currently available, click on the links below.
Direction 1: Market, Market, Market
Direction 2: One Size Doesn’t Fit All
Direction 3: Think Bigger, Work Smarter
Direction 4: Seize the Power of Technology
Direction 5: Quality is Job One
Direction 6: Policy Matters
Direction 7: Staying Alive
Direction 8: What’s in a Name?
FIELD intends to add new materials to this resource bank regularly. If there are materials relevant to our directions that you have developed or found useful, please e-mail us at fieldus@aspeninstitute.org.
Action Planning Kit
FIELD recognizes that not all of the directions it identified for the microenterprise field will apply to every microenterprise program. Moreover, most organizations will set priorities after determining which directions are most important and/or appropriate given their circumstances, and what kind of funding is required and available. Thus, FIELD has created a special kit designed to help practitioners lead their staff and board through a well thought-out process that involves reflecting on current challenges, assessing organizational strengths and weaknesses, and charting an appropriate set of action steps aimed at strengthening the organization.
Included in Fulfilling the Promise: An Action Planning Kit for Practitioners are: a printed “Guide for Board and Staff,” a narrated CD-ROM containing a PowerPoint designed to encourage conversation between board and staff, and other helpful materials.
Learn more about An Action Planning Kit for Practitioners
FIELD and MicroTest will present the following sessions at the AEO National Summit on Entrepreneurship, May 20-23, 2008 in Anaheim, Calif.
May 21, 2008, 10-noon: Findings from the Field: Understanding and Using Data on Client Outcomes. This session will draw on findings from the Aspen Institute’s MicroTest Client Outcomes tools, the largest national data set of clients who have received services from microenterprise development programs. Participants will explore what we’re learning about how clients’ businesses grow and develop, what effect that is having on clients’ households and the larger community, and how you can use this data both internally and externally.
May 21, 2008, 3-5 p.m.: Scaling Up, Creating Community Impact: Promising Strategies from the Scale Academy. Achieving scale is a challenge in the U.S. microenterprise field, one that has daunted many practitioners. Where are the breakthroughs? Learn from the Scale Academy, a group of eight organizations working in rural and urban settings in transformational ways to achieve dramatic growth. Hear about their strategies, progress and challenges in developing new products, in using technologies for distance learning and distance lending, and expanding access to markets. Also learn how some of these organizations are developing their messaging and marketing, creating new partnerships, and facing the organizational challenges attendant upon real institutional change.
Webinar explored social enterprises. A Webinar exploring how three microenterprise programs created social enterprises as part of a sustainability strategy drew more than 90 participants. Staff from the programs were interviewed during a lively discussion of their start-up and ongoing business challenges. The three programs interviewed were: Mountain BizWorks (western North Carolina), which created the Mountain Made craft gallery; WREN (Women’s Rural Entrepreneurial Network, New Hampshire), which established WRENovation gift shop; and Wisconsin Women’s Business Initiative Corporation, which developed “Coffee with a Conscience” coffee shops. Click here to hear the Webinar.
Webcast trainings on MicroTest’s Performance and Outcomes products.
Live and archived versions of MicroTest's hour-long sessions provide an opportunity for MicroTest members to train new staff, or refresh the skill of existing staff members, while they fill out their workbooks for Fiscal Year 2006. Read more.
