Our work connects theory and practice, and links the reality of practitioners to the demands of investors and donors. Through a deep understanding and focus on social value and impact we are able to identify opportunities to improve practice for individual organisations and at a sector or policy level.

The Business of Doing Good

Why is it that so many organizations, seeking to do good in the world, miss opportunities to do so – and indeed sometimes exacerbate the very problem they seek to address? The Business of Doing Good reveals six insights for microfinance and other social purpose organizations using the marketplace to tackle a range of pressing social challenges. To deliver on good intentions, we need to do more than simply deliver ‘good products’, and become organizations designed to do good. 

The Business of Doing Good charts the course of one remarkable and profitable social enterprise (AMK) that has, with single-minded purpose, made radical choices and reached deep into rural Cambodia, touching the lives of millions of people living in poverty. 

The book also highlights the critical role of the international development charity Concern Worldwide in providing the 'patient capital' that allowed AMK to innovate and respond to clients needs, and in maintaining a focus on AMK's social purpose and avoid the mission drift that has affected so many microfinance organisations. 

This is a practical book that aims sets out important questions for the microfinance practitioners, social entrepreneurs, businesses, impact investors, philanthropists, and students of international development and business.

Order the book - available from your local bookshop in 30 countries.

Centre for Financial Inclusion podcast Larry Reed, director of the Microcredit Summit Campaign, recently sat down with Susy Cheston, senior advisor to FI2020, and Anton Simanowitz, co-author of the new book The Business of Doing Good, to discuss how organizations can do good work and turn a profit, particularly in the microfinance sector:

Anton Simanowitz has played an numerous advisory roles including for the development of standards for pro-poor organisations, standards for social performance management in microfinance: