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Training and technical assistance are areas in which microenterprise programs invest substantial budget resources and clients invest a great deal of time. In fact, these services are provided by more than 90 percent of all microenterprise development organizations. FIELD has engaged in two projects aimed at assisting practitioners to improve the quality of their microenterprise training and technical assistance services: its Best Practices Guides series, and its grant cluster on the Effectiveness of Training and Technical Assistance.
Best Practices Guides
FIELD's past research indicates that despite the importance of training and technical assistance services within the U.S. microenteprise field, there are few resources available to help implementers improve their services and/or assess their efforts against best practice standards. Using grants from the Small Business Administration and the Mott Foundation, FIELD has created a series of "best practice" training modules designed to help practitioners deliver more effective training and technical assistance to low-income clients.
These modules are based on lessons extracted from FIELD's past work and input from leading practitioners, who served as advisors.
Staying Connected: Building Entrepreneurial Networks establishes a rationale for a conscious approach to networking by presenting several examples of successful networks and detailing the ways microenterprise organizations have fostered their clients' development of these networks.
FIELD Best Practice Guide: Volume 5
Business First: Using Technology to Advance Microenterprise Development introduces a framework for selecting and planning technology that supports business objectives, and offers insights into how programs can assist microentrepreneurs with business automation, on-line learning and Web-based marketing.
FIELD Best Practice Guide: Volume 4
Keeping It Personalized: Consulting, Coaching & Mentoring for Microentrepreneurs provides a summary of findings from research in business consulting, coaching and mentoring with case-study examples of best practices in all three types of technical assistance targeted to low-income clients.
FIELD Best Practice Guide: Volume 3
Training for Microenterprise Development: A Guide to Curricula identifies the characteristics of an effective business-planning curriculum for low-income clients and reviews a set of products currently being marketed to practitioners.
FIELD Best Practice Guide: Volume 2
Building Skills for Self-Employment: Basic Training for Microentrepreneurs offers best practices in core training and their implications for improving training services.
FIELD Best Practice Guide: Volume 1
Entering the Relationship: Finding and Assessing Microenterprise Training Clients explores how program practitioners can conduct market research, develop effective marketing strategies, and appropriately screen and assess incoming clients.
Entrepreneur Profiles: A Mushrooming Business & Mother of Invention
To read about small businesses that benefited from a range of training and technical assistance services, please visit our entrepreneur profiles.
Effectiveness of Training and Technical Assistance
Understanding the role of business development training and technical assistance as a centerpiece of U.S. microenterprise development organizations, one of FIELD’s earliest grant clusters was designed to understand the relationship between these training and technical assistance services and the business outcomes experienced by clients. Most specifically, its intent was to identify those program components, or elements of program design or delivery, that are most related to client success. Toward that end, in June 1999 field awarded two-year grants to five organizations to conduct research aimed at better understanding what constitutes effective training and technical assistance services.
Key Findings
Through this cluster, FIELD identified 17 specific findings regarding client characteristics and program practices that can influence business outcomes. In addition, FIELD identified a number of implications for those interested in improving their program design and delivery. These findings and program implications are contained in the monograph:
Improving Microenterprise Training and Technical Assistance: Findings for Program Managers (see below).
In brief, the research projects supported under the cluster identified a set of client characteristics associated with training completion and business success including:
- Business ownership and/or exposure to business ownership in a family,
- Relevant work experience,
- Personal support systems and encouragement,
- Access to a basic infrastructure (reliable transport, driver's license, telephone, computer and bank account), and
- Clarity of goals and business idea.
The research also identified the following program components that are associated with client success:
- Strong training in business planning, basic financial skills and marketing,
- Special attention to teaching pricing skills,
- Business plan completion,
- Class assignment completion and training completion (so helping clients make it through is very important),
- A dynamic, participatory training style,
- Providing technical assistance during the first 12 to 24 months after core training, and a mechanism that encourages clients to access the service,
- Additional support on marketing and accounting, and
- Business consulting focused on strategic planning and decision-making as well as on specific technical skills.
Publications
The research in this cluster yielded a rich set of findings about how to assess and improve the effectiveness of microenterprise training and technical assistance. These findings, as well as the research tools and approaches that yielded them, are documented in the following publications:
Improving Microenterprise Training and Technical Assistance: Findings for Program Managers. Published in 2002, this monograph contains findings and program implications drawn from the experiences of the five grantees in the cluster. Can be downloaded free.
All five grantees in this cluster wrote detailed reports about the research they undertook. Read full reports.
Assessment Tools for Microenterprise Training and Technical Assistance. This tools manual draws on the work of the five organizations that were part of this cluster. Included are 13 tools designed and used by the groups, plus an explanation of each tool's purpose and when during the training process it should be applied. Available in print only, $15.
FIELD forum Issue 1 - Assessing the Effectiveness of Training and Technical Assistance. This forum profiles the five organizations participating in the Training and Technical Assistance Cluster, describes the importance of this issue and explains the specific research approach each organization planned to undertake.
Learning Cluster Members
The five projects selected to receive grants and participate in this learning cluster are briefly described.
The learning evaluation for this cluster had three major components, which are described here in detail.
