Microfinance USA Conference Blog

Are you involved in a startup microfinance organization in the United States? If so, take some time to read FIELD’s recent publications Marketing for Micro 101: Lessons from around the U.S. and Data That Works.

Why these publications?

In 1999, FIELD and the Aspen Institute published a case study on student-run microfinance organizations in the US and their role in the domestic microfinance industry. The study concluded that “…university-based initiatives contain promising assets and resources that could strengthen the domestic microenterprise field.”   Since then, FIELD has continued to support student microfinance groups in strengthening their programing. These publications, released in late 2011, are designed as a conceptual roadmap towards designing a well-targeted and effective microfinance program. Both handbooks are comprehensive enough to serve the same purpose for any small MFI looking to design or improve its programming.

Marketing for Microfinance 101

Marketing for Micro 101 opens with a succinct overview of the challenges of market penetration, one of the biggest obstacles for MFIs large and small. It describes the process of establishing a target market, and offers several helpful resources for market research.  It goes on to emphasize the importance of applying the lessons learned from the market research to a program’s design and offers several brief but pointed case studies of MFIs that have done just that with great results. Marketing for Microfinance offers an in-depth overview of several potential outreach strategies, including direct client outreach, indirect marketing through partner organizations, and channel development for targeted marketing.  For those looking for more in-depth marketing information the guide offers links to other FIELD resources on the topic. Marketing for Microfinance concludes by warning against some common pitfalls in client outreach, including choosing or managing your partners unwisely, and failing to be responsive to client your data and client feedback. This handbook is truly an excellent starting place for MFIs that want to learn how to target both their products and their marketing.

Data that Works

Data that Works tackles another of the most daunting challenges for any MFI: effective data collection. This vital step, which is so often overwhelming to MFIs with limited human resource and training capacities, is broken down into a few important conceptual steps:

Define your information needs: Data That Works encourages readers to be realistic both about their information needs, and their capacity to collect and manage data. It breaks down the different kinds of data that an MFI can collect, who needs access to the data and for what purposes, and how to store and manage your data so that it is accessible and usable for the whole organization.

Design an excellent intake form: The guide emphasizes the importance of intake forms for establishing baseline measurements, and provides an some straight-forward but important recommendations for making your intake form usable. It recommends keeping your intake form short, making it precise and making sure the questions asked of the client are clear and well defined.

Mapping Outcomes: Data that works goes on to emphasize the importance of tracking your program’s outcomes in terms of your organization’s mission, the performance of the organization and, importantly, the success of your clients.  It offers an easy to use format for doing so.

Using data effectively: Tracking outcomes is interesting, but ineffective until that data is applied towards making a program run better or a product more useful to your clients. Data that works concludes its recommendations with a discussion of the various ways a data-driven organization can outperform less data-responsive organizations.

In combination, these guides offer a powerful starting place for both student groups and startup MFIs working to design an effective microfinance program. Be sure to integrate them into your resource library!