Designed to encourage more investment in the microenterprise industry — and improve performance through increased transparency — FIELD is building MicroTracker, an online data resource that will make key information more accessible — and powerful — to practitioners, funders and the media. The site will build on FIELD's 20-year history of data collection on microenterprise development practice.

Microenterprise practitioner users will be able to input data directly on the site, and they, as well as funders, media and researchers, can use the information to generate trends and benchmarking reports illustrated with simple but powerful graphics. This will allow those interested in the microenterprise field to pose questions and get answers regarding the industry on a national, state, local and program level.

Market research conducted during a feasibility study on the project yielded enthusiastic support from practitioners:

"Telling a compelling story is really critical. A lot of our funding is very data driven. The ability to share the anecdotes along with the data is crucial for our local funders."

"Transparency is extremely important. As an unregulated movement, we need to maintain a high level of trust with the public. We need to keep elevating these values if we hope to want to keep the public trust and keep an unregulated environment that allows for innovation."

FIELD will be rolling out the first phase of MicroTracker in spring of 2011, with a complete roll-out by year-end.