This research theme explores the critical skills, structures and systems required to enable an organization to serve large numbers of aspiring entrepreneurs successfully. Industry data compares large-scale providers with other practitioners in terms of their size, financial characteristics, and range of services offered.

Overview/Introductory Information

Key Data on the Scale of Business Development Services
Presents data that documents the number, size, and services offered by microenterprise development organizations that provide a range of training and technical assistance services to clients. The data is drawn from a FIELD survey of the U.S. industry completed in the fall of 2009 and documenting 2008 statistics.

Findings Reports

Findings Report on Business Development Services
FIELD's latest report on lessons learned by six members of the Scale Academy for Microenterprise Development seeking to grow their business development services over a three-year period.

Resources on Organizational Issues for Business Development Service Providers

Findings from the Scale Academy - Forging Ahead: Early Lessons (2009)
Summarizes early lessons of seven grantees in the Scale Academy for Microenterprise Development, a four-year effort to uncover innovative, effective scale-up strategies. Three are institutions that have made business development services their lead services. The publication documents key institutional considerations in achieving scale.

FIELD forum Issue 21 - Building Sustainability by Increasing Earned Revenue (2008)
Explores how ACEnet (the Appalachian Center for Economic Networks) is using earned income as a strategy to achieve greater sustainability. ACEnet has long earned income from its business incubation activities. This forum describes how, after the organization experienced the loss of a long-term source of grant funding, it added other earned-income streams - including regional brands and consulting services - in an effort to achieve more stable and sustainable sources of revenue. The publication also notes that building these revenue streams requires thoughtful investment of organizational capital and staff resources.

FIELD forum Issue 19 - Blazing a Trail to Sustainability through Social Enterprise: A Case Example(2008)
Focuses on social enterprises as a way for microenterprise programs to increase their sustainability. The experience of one program - Mountain BizWorks, which created a artisans' gallery in 2002 - is used as a case study. The publication details how and why the enterprise was launched, identifies some of the challenges encountered, and explains some of the critical lessons learned through the experience.

Webinars

“What Have Business Development Services-Focused Programs Learned About Scaling-up?”
Shaw Canale of Mountain BizWorks and Agnes Noonan of WESST, two of six Scale Academy members engaged in a year-long peer learning exchange, will join us to discuss their strategies for scale and their approaches to sustaining it.
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