Microfinance Initiatives: MicroFinanceCentre

MicroFinanceCentre

Project purpose

The MicroFinanceCentre, www.mfc.org.pl in collaboration with MicroSave, Imp-Act , and Microfinance Opportunities and financed by the Ford Foundation, facilitates the action research project on SPM to support MFIs in adjusting their current management systems to better integrate their social goals and manage progress towards the goals fulfillment. The project is intended to maximize social returns through purposeful socially-driven microfinance, while integrating social goals into MFI's management systems through strategic planning for social goals and social audits.

Activities

All three of the following activities are interrelated to fill the most important gaps to move the social agenda forward:

1. Development and pilot-testing of the strategic planning for social goals protocol
   
   1. Development: integration of Social Performance Management Framework, Balanced Scorecard and Development Pathways and initial protocol adaptation in CEE & NIS
      
   2. Field test in 3 regions (East Africa, CEE&NIS, Latin America)
      
   3. Scaling-up
   
   
   
2. Development and pilot-testing of the social audit protocol
   1. Development: integration of Social Performance Management Framework, Feedback Loop, Social Enterprise Audit and Accounting Frameworks and initial protocol adaptation in CEE&NIS
      
   2. Field test in 2 regions (East Africa, Latin America)
      
   3. Scale-up
   
   
   
3. Development and dissemination of Managerial Toolkit for Social Performance including:
   
   1. Strategic planning protocol for social goals
      
   2. Social audit protocol
      
   3. A series of Spotlight Notes and Briefing Notes
      
   4. Resource CD
      

Ultimate objectives

1. Increase demand from MFIs and other stakeholders for information and assistance in implementing social performance management particularly in terms of strategy formulation and operationalization, developing and institutionalizing social performance assessment systems;
   
   
2. Increase demand from MFIs and other stakeholders for information and assistance in conducting social audit as an important element of verifying and improving MFI's performance;
   
   
3. Promote development of social performance management systems and adaptation of existing processes to integrate social goals in increasing number of MFIs;
   
   
4. Increase number of MFIs with capacity and culture to achieve their social performance goals;
   
   
5. Increase transparency in reporting on MFI performance ñ including social performance reporting as a standard element of performance reporting through the use of internal SPM and social auditing;
   
   
6. Develop industry social standards based on internally developed socially audited SPMs.