ASCA: Accumulated Savings and Credit Association. An informal community group where the savings of the members accumulate instead of being emptied to one member every collection day (as in ROSCA). Loans can be provided from the pot of mobilized savings. ASCAs may be time-bound or they can last indefinitely, but sound practice encourages time bound ASCAs.
Asset Transfers: When productive goods – livestock, seeds, tools, cash – are given to people to help them re-establish their livelihood.
Banks: The formal institution for holding savings and extending credit that is regulated by the central bank of the country.
Business Services (or products): Formerly referred to as “Business Development Services,” or BDS, these are activities and items that help businesses become more productive, reach market, or reduce costs. They can exist in stand-alone markets, or strengthen a value chain. Some refer to these as “support services” or products, because they support the value chain.
Client Assessment: Collecting information from existing and potential clients in order to better understand their need and demand for services, especially microfinance services.
Commercial business services: Business services and enterprise to assist in business functioning or growth that is delivered by other businesses, through the market. See also “business development services” or “business services.”
Credit Unions and Cooperatives: Credit unions, or savings and credit cooperatives, are user-owned, democratically controlled, not-for-profit microfinance institutions that offer savings, credit, insurance and remittance services to their members.
Credit with Education: In this model, microfinance institutions offer credit and savings to groups of individuals. The institution takes advantage of the regular group meetings to offer clients information and training.
Demand: A combination of awareness of a need, the need itself, and the ability to pay for solutions to the need, such as products or services.
Demand-driven: Means responding to high-priority Social Enterprise (SE) need for services, and the existence of financial pressure on the provider to deliver a valuable service to the SE.
Economic strengthening: A term often used by practitioners targeting orphans and vulnerable children and the very poor. In addition to some types of microenterprise development, economic strengthening tends to also include cash transfers, vocational training and workforce development, and legal services.
Enterprise Development: Helping people establish and expand businesses or more modest income generating activities, through access to markets for inputs, for their products, and for business services such as training, information, technology or transportation. Helping enterprises enter, remain in and benefit more from market participation. Includes market development, business development services, value chain development, commercial business services, social enterprise, etc.
Enabling Environment or Business Environment: The wide range of issues and institutions that are outside the value chain but affect how it works: for example, policies and regulations, trade issues, cultural norms, infrastructure, government agencies, associations, informal networks and NGOs.
Facilitation: Conducting temporary activities within a value chain in order to permanently overcome constraints and develop the value chain.
Facilitator or Facilitating Organization: An international or local institution that uses public funds to promote the development of specific value chains.
Financial systems approach: The development of regulations and institutions to support broad expansion of the microfinance industry, in addition to supporting individual, sustainable microfinance institutions.
Group Enterprises: Businesses owned and launched by small groups of target clients, often referred to as “income generating activities.”
Group Lending: Lending mechanism which allows a group of individuals – either a solidarity group or a village bank- to provide collateral or loan guarantee through a group repayment pledge. The incentive to repay the loan is based on peer pressure – if one group member defaults, the other group members make up the payment amount.
Higher-Value Market: Groups of consumers that are more stable, offer higher prices, or offer higher volume than usual, local SE markets.
Impact: Long-term result in market system and/or among the target population as a consequence of program activities and outcomes.
Income Generating Activity: Used in a variety of ways and not recommended as a term in this guide. Sometimes it is a general word referring to microenterprises. Sometimes it refers to self-employment by very poor people who have no employees. Often, it refers to group enterprises.
Industry: A sector (or subsector) which produces a particular product or service. The term includes the broader market systems involved in the production of a product or service beyond a single value chain.
Input: Material good required to produce another good or product.
Intervention: A temporary activity conducted by a development or government agency designed to permanently overcome a particular constraint and develop one or several value chains.
Livelihood Security: A livelihood is a combination of the resources used and the activities undertaken in order to live. The resources might consist of individual skills and abilities (human capital), land, savings and equipment (natural, financial and physical capital, respectively) and formal support groups or informal networks that assist in the activities being undertaken (social capital). Livelihood security refers to the community of practice that helps people obtain and maintain strong livelihoods.
Market: The interaction of demand and supply for a particular product or service and the factors that affect these; or, a consumer segment for a particular product or service. For example, the export market or an urban market.
Market Analysis, Assessment, Research: Gathering information about potential clients, their industry, and the end-customer demand for their products and services. Processing and presenting this information for use in making key program design and implementation decisions. Used often in enterprise development.
Market Development Approach: An approach to enterprise promotion which focuses on developing private sector markets for goods and services to make them more inclusive of and beneficial to specific groups of enterprises or people. Includes both value chain development and commercial business services.
Market Linkages: Relationships in any market between buyers and sellers. This term is often used to describe activities that help clients find customers or “markets” for their products. Here, we advance the strategy of “value chain development” that strengthens market linkages among all businesses in a specific industry or value chain – from input supplier through intermediaries and on to the final customer.
Market Opportunity: End markets or consumer segments that are growing and/or offer the potential for sales of higher value products or services.
Market Research: Information gathering on a value chain to inform program design decisions. The research includes information gathering on all parts of the value chain as well as on the end markets for the products or services of program clients, the enabling environment and related socio-economic issues. This process is also called Market Assessment.
Market (re) Entry Services: basic (often subsidized) business services that help destitute or very poor people to (re)start microenterprises and (re)enter markets.
Microcredit: A part of the field of microfinance, microcredit is the provision of credit services to low-income entrepreneurs. Microcredit can also refer to the actual microloan.
Microenterprise: A small-scale business in the informal sector. Microenterprises often employ less than 5 people and can be based out of the home. Microenterprise is often the sole source of family income but can also act as a supplement to other forms of income. Examples of microenterprises include small retail kiosks, sewing workshops, carpentry shops and market stalls.
Microentrepreneur: Owner/ proprietor of a microenterprise.
Microenterprise Development: Two overlapping development activities:
- Helping people start and run very small businesses and farms
- Helping people access financial services (i.e. loans, savings, insurance and remittances).
Together these two activities provide people with the capacity to manage crises and work their way out of poverty.
Microfinance: Financial services such as lending, savings, insurance and money transfer, designed for the needs of low-income populations.
Microinsurance: A developing field of microfinance that provides health insurance and other insurance products to microentrepreneurs and employees in the informal sector.
Microloan: A loan imparted by a microfinance institution to a microentrepreneur, to be used in the development of the borrower’s small business. Microloans are used for working capital in the purchase of raw materials and goods for the microenterprise, as capital for construction, or in the purchase of fixed assets that aid in production, among other things. The loans can also be for improving a microentrepreneur’s house.
Money Transfer or Remittance Services: Facilities that help people move money from one location to another.
Operational Self-Sufficiency (OSS): A measure of financial efficiency equal to total operating revenues divided by total administrative and financial expenses. If the resulting figure is greater than 100%, the organization under evaluation is considered to be operationally self-sufficient. In microfinance, operationally sustainable institutions are able to cover administrative costs with client revenues.
Parallel Programs: Some broad development organizations conduct integrated development programs on health and agriculture, and also support independent microfinance institutions who serve their eligible clients. Clients can access a range of financial services when needed, but the microfinance institutions can make independent decisions about each client’s creditworthiness.
Portfolio at Risk: Measurement of the total outstanding balance of loans past due – not late payments or payments not yet due – divided by the active portfolio. A more rigorous manner of assessing portfolio quality than portfolio past due/delinquent portfolio. Portfolio at Risk can be 1 day, 30 days, 90 days, or more late. Usually 30 days late is the most common measure.
Provider: A firm or institution that provides support products or services to enterprises. Providers include private for-profit firms, NGOs, government agencies, industry associations and individuals.
ROSCA: Rotating Savings and Credit Association. A financial services group where all members contribute equally and receive the pot once per cycle on a pre-scheduled basis. (i.e. Weekly meetings, with distribution schedule set by lottery).
Scale: Reaching larger numbers of clients.
Small & Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs): Enterprises employing 5 to 10 workers (small-scale) or between 10 and 50 workers (medium-scale).
Social Enterprise: A nonprofit organization or socially oriented venture that advances its social mission through entrepreneurial market-based approaches to increase its effectiveness and financial sustainability with the ultimate goal of creating social impact or change.
Strategic Alliances: Some microfinance institutions are entering partnerships with business development or health organizations who want to add microfinance to the package of services they offer clients. In these situations, microfinance institutions devise services appropriate for the target market and make financial services available to eligible clients.
Supplier: A seller of products to other businesses. “Supplier” often refers to those companies that sell inputs to value chain players.
Sustainability: Capacity of a business, solution, service, or market to continue on an ongoing basis without financial support from government or charity (NGO) organizations.
- In the market development context, refers to the functioning of a market: the durability and financial viability of market linkages, and the availability of support products and services on a commercial basis. It implies the ability of the market to respond to shifts in demand and competition.
- In the microfinance context, it refers to the sustainability of the microfinance institution.
Target Group (Client): Often part of an organization’s mission or value, the ultimate program clients/beneficiaries
Value Chain: A market system. The network of firms that buy and sell to each other in order to supply a particular set of products or services to a particular group of final consumers. A value chain includes both those market players directly involved in the production and distribution of the end products or services and those that provide support products and services.
Value Chain Analysis: Analyzing market information on a particular value chain in order to understand various aspects of the value chain including value chain players, value chain characteristics and the enabling environment.
Village banking: Lending methodology in which clients – typically women – form groups of approximately 10-30 individuals that are autonomously responsible for leadership, bylaws, bookkeeping, fund management and loan supervision. The group pools funds to use for business loans, savings, and mutual support, and members cross-guarantee individual loans.
