Sustainability

For the microenterprise field to grow and become sustainable, it must increase self-sufficiency and secure more stable sources of support. To gain and sustain funder interest, microenterprise development programs need more detailed and rigorous information on the outcomes their clients experience, and on other benefits their programs contribute to local economic development. Increasing self-sufficiency also will demand that programs generate more ways to recover their costs - by finding and implementing strategies to increase efficiency, by increasing interest and fee income, and by creating other revenue generating strategies. While there are a number of strategies programs might employ to earn income, one that has attracted considerable interest is to create and manage a social enterprise with double bottom line results, benefiting clients as well as the program itself.

To help the field explore these issues, FIELD has: