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The Impact Sector is Confusing Satisfaction with Impact: Rethinking the Growing Reliance on Perception Surveys
Measurement standards in the impact sector have shifted toward perception surveys — i.e., forms that ask individuals to rate their personal experience with a program or organization — to quantify success. But as Juan Taborda Burgos, Jorge Bouchot and Miranda Hansen at Root Capital argue, perception-based metrics can mask a program’s ineffectiveness, potentially leading organizations to scale interventions that do not work. They share insights from a recent Root Capital report that reveal the downsides of relying solely on perception data, and offer four actionable principles that can help leaders navigate the pressure to demonstrate impact — while avoiding costly mistakes.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Investing, Social Enterprise
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Viewpoint: The Economy That Remembers: Institutional Amnesia and the Regenerative Correction
Modern capitalism has perfected a hidden discipline: the systematic design of economic systems that forget. What we call “externalities” are not costs that disappear — they are consequences displaced. The regenerative economy, at its core, is not simply greener or more inclusive. It is an effort to build systems that remember.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
- Region
- Global
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Spiro Secures $50 Million to Boost African Expansion
Spiro, Africa’s electric mobility leader and battery swapping pioneer, today announced the raising of $50 million in debt funding from Afreximbank and two new investors Nithio and Africa Go Green Fund managed by Cygnum Capital. The new funding follows Spiro’s landmark $100 million investment in October 2025, which became Africa's largest-ever electric mobility investment.
- Categories
- Energy, Transportation
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Press Release: IDB Lab to Invest $8 Million in AgVentures III Fund to Advance Agtech Innovation
Fund manager SP Ventures' impact thesis is to generate social benefits for vulnerable populations by supporting technologies that democratize access to productivity and efficiency for small- and medium-sized farmers.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Investing
- Region
- Latin America
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Viewpoint: Measuring More and Learning Less
How an excessive focus on methods has distracted attention from the more fundamental challenge of building rigor and learning overall.
- Categories
- Investing
- Region
- Global
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Storytelling for Velocity, Not Visibility: Why African Development Organizations Need a New Communications Playbook
Something subtle yet profound is changing in how global development organizations in Africa communicate about their work and impact. According to Chrisphine Omondi, a communications specialist with experience across the continent, these organizations have often relied on external communications consultants who produce reports, recommendations and strategies, then exit before those plans are fully implemented. He argues that this model no longer fits the pace and complexity of Africa’s evolving development ecosystem, and explores how African organizations can create a more holistic, systems-based communications model that aligns with the broader changes that are reshaping global development.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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Entrepreneur-Friendly Inclusive Finance: A Survey of Brazilian MSMEs Highlights Key Lessons for Lenders
In Brazil, impact-focused lenders like Estímulo are successfully reaching small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) with inclusive lending approaches. But as Carla Grados-Villamar at 60 Decibels and Lucas Conrado at Estímulo explain, inclusive finance is not just about disbursing loans — it’s about understanding entrepreneurs’ realities and adapting accordingly. They share findings from 60 Decibels' interviews with over 400 Estímulo loan applicants, highlighting lessons lenders can use to improve business outcomes for borrowers, and prepare non-borrowers for future credit opportunities.
- Categories
- Finance
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Rwanda Launches $13 Million Outcomes-Based Early Childhood Education Programme
Building on its early childhood reforms, the Government of Rwanda is pioneering outcomes-based financing as a core part of its national strategy, linking funding to measurable improvements in the quality and inclusivity of early learning.
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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