In the publication Opening Opportunities, Building Ownership: Fulfilling the Promise of Microenterprise in the United States, FIELD identified a set of actions that key players – including donors – can take to help ensure a healthy and more sustainable future for the field.

With support from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, FIELD is engaged in two efforts to support donors interested in the domestic microenterprise field.  FIELD’s Funder Guide Series is a set of brief publications aimed at helping donors better understand the industry and its challenges, as well as where investments could be most effective. In addition, FIELD is providing staff support to an informal Microenterprise Funders Group focused on U.S. microenterprise development that will share information and other resources to inform their grantmaking.

FIELD Funder Guide Series

FIELD’s new Funder Guide Series offers a brief – four pages or less – look at a specific issue or aspect of microenterprise and pinpoints opportunities for funders. In many instances, the guides highlight the work of already-engaged funders.

The guides are available as free PDFs:

FIELD Funder Guide Issue 1: Fulfilling the Microenterprise Promise: Background for Funders. This guide lays out an array of economic trends that have sparked a growing interest in self-employment and describes how microenterprise development programs are responding. 

FIELD Funder Guide Issue 2: Microenterprise: Making a Difference. This guide examines the microenterprise industry’s accomplishments and its value with respect to poverty alleviation, economic development, asset development and ownership, and increased access to financial services.

FIELD Funder Guide Issue 3: Moving Forward: Industry Challenges, Funder Opportunities. This guide explores the current challenges facing the microenterprise industry, and suggests specific approaches funders can use in their grantmaking to help the industry respond.  

FIELD Funder Guide Issue 4: Performance Counts. This guide presents a clear picture of what high performance looks like in the microenterprise industry and offers concrete strategies funders can pursue to drive improvement in performance.

FIELD Funder Guide Issue 5: Microenterprise Development Programs: The Entrepreneur Within. This guide explores why programs should emulate their clients and become more entrepreneurial as part of a strategy to attain greater sustainability. Featured are two programs that recognized that need and made strategic changes to build a more sustainable organization. Opportunities for funders to support such efforts also are described.

FIELD Funder Guide Issue 6: Scaling Up, Achieving More. This guide explores the various factors that affect an organization’s ability to reach scale — including the need for market research, a diversified product line and capable staff, as well as the importance of tapping into new geographic markets, investing in infrastructure and considering various forms of strategic restructuring. In addition, the guide features two microenterprise programs that found different ways to meet the challenge of scale, and offers specific recommendations for funders interested in the issue.

FIELD Funder Guide Issue 7: Going Faster and Farther: Harnessing Technology for Microenterprise. This guide explores the role technology can play as microenterprise development organizations struggle with the challenges of: increasing their organizational efficiency; reaching out to entrepreneurs who are geographically dispersed; and helping them improve their marketing and sales. The guide describes what funders interested in supporting technology projects should look for, and profiles some interesting work undertaken by funders.

FIELD Funder Guide Issue 8: The Emerging Immigrant Market and Microenterprise. This guide explores the role immigrants are playing in the U.S. economy and especially in microenterprise. The guide examines how microenterprise development programs are assisting this high potential emerging business market and identifies opportunities for funders interested in furthering those efforts.

FIELD Funder Guide Issue 9: Making the Economic Development Connection. This guide explores some of the strategies microenterprise development programs are using to more directly connect their work to economic development efforts. In addition to providing examples of strategies used by microenterprise organizations, the guide also suggests specific ways funders can invest to help expand the use of microenterprise as a tool for economic development.

FIELD Funder Guide Issue 10: Microenterprise Programs as Asset Builders. This guide explores how microenterprise development programs are joining forces with corporations, financial institutions, government and an array of community development organizations to promote matched savings accounts, financial literacy, better access to credit, and tax benefits for low-income families. The guide also points out ways funders can support these asset-building strategies.

FIELD Funder Guide Issue 11: Social Enterprise and Microenterprise: Understanding the Connection. This guide explores how the microenterprise industry is connecting with the emerging social enterprise field. It takes an in-depth look at a number of microenterprise programs that have started social enterprises, identifies the lessons learned from their experiences and pinpoints specific investment opportunities for donors.

Microenterprise Funders Group

A group of nearly a dozen funders - including some long-term microenterprise supporters as well as others new to the field - decided at a fall 2005 convening organized by the Mott Foundation to form an informal "Microenterprise Funders Group." The purpose of the group is to provide venues - including periodic meetings and a Web site - through which funders interested in the field can share ideas, information and learning. Ultimately, the hope is that the group can support more effective and engaged funding, and perhaps lead to some joint funding initiatives. The next meeting of the Microenterprise Funders Group has been rescheduled from fall 2007 to mid-January 2008 in New York City. Topics to be discussed include how microenterprise programs are reaching out to and serving the immigrant market.

Click here for more information about the funders group.