This book presents the findings of a five-year action research programme into how far poverty-oriented microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Africa, Asia, and Latin America are contributing to global poverty reduction, and how they can do so more effectively. Martin Greeley reviews evidence on their success in reaching poorer clients and improving the average income and wealth of their clients (chs 2&3). Naila Kabeer reviews evidence on performance against a wider array of indicators, including women's empowerment, citizenship rights, and social inclusion (chs.4&5). Both authors highlight methodological difficulties associated with assessing impact, but are cautiously positive. Susan Johnson is more cautious, suggesting that the contribution of MFIs to the overall growth of financial services in selected parts of Africa and India remains small (ch.6). James Copestake reviews evidence on the organizational factors that influence achievement of MFIs' social as well as financial goals, as well as progress in routinely monitoring and managing social performance (ch.7&8). He and Anton Simanowitz then make clear and simple suggestions for how this can be done better (ch.9). This covers how MFIs can manage their 'double bottom lines' more effectively, as well as what public and private investors in microfinance can do to help them. The bigger challenge, linking up with the wider movement for corporate social responsibility, is to find ways to do so across the entire financial sector.

This book reflects the implications of a social performance management agenda for the perspective of twelve partners from Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe, who participated in a three-year microfinance action-research programme known as Imp-Act. It features contributions from MFI staff who worked with Imp-Act directly, as well as from members of Imp-Act's academic team, who worked closely with the partners. The book reflects each MFI's unique, contextualized approach to measuring and monitoring the social impacts of microfinance, emphasizing the role played by this work in improving delivery of services; increasing client satisfaction and reducing drop-outs from microfinance programmes; and increasing impacts on poverty. Running through the book are three interlinked stories: the story of Imp-Act, an action-research partnership responding to particular concerns within the microfinance industry; the story of organizational systems and learning around social impacts, and the resulting changes to service provision and working practices; and the story of changes in clients' lives. The book reveals the faces behind the social performance agenda and the processes of discovery and self-discovery that underlie programme learning. The book communicates that Imp-Act is not only about proving impact or improving services, but is also about MFIs rediscovering their mission goals and instilling a sense of purpose in their staff and clients. Above all, the book shows that each management is unique, reflecting cultural and organizational differences. Thus, in contrast to available impact assessment frameworks, learning through Imp-Act has been largely driven by the MFI's own goals and perspectives.

This book presents a Bangladesh case study of the farm-level postharvest system. There are two main objectives. First, to use measured estimates of food loss to test (and reject) the conventional assumptions: that postharvest farm-level food losses are large; that they can be prevented cost-effectively by technical change; and that as a consequence, there will be more food consumption by hungry people. Commonly, none of these assumptions are true and the evidence from Bangladesh, plus supporting evidence from elsewhere, is used to show why they are wrong.