The quest for the evaluation of microfinance social performance

Several stakeholders have joined forces in recent years to facilitate consensus building on practices, indicators and standards that might serve to increase accountability and improve microfinance social performance. As a result, several sets of social standards have been developed to provide social...

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Main Authors: Javier Sierra, Fernando Rodriguez-Lopez
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Universidad de Zaragoza, Cátedra de Solidaridad y Ciudadanía Global 2020-11-01
Series:Revista Iberoamericana de Estudios de Desarrollo
Subjects:
Online Access:http://ried.unizar.es/index.php/revista/article/viewFile/351/pdf_1
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author Javier Sierra
Fernando Rodriguez-Lopez
author_facet Javier Sierra
Fernando Rodriguez-Lopez
author_sort Javier Sierra
collection DOAJ
description Several stakeholders have joined forces in recent years to facilitate consensus building on practices, indicators and standards that might serve to increase accountability and improve microfinance social performance. As a result, several sets of social standards have been developed to provide social performance assessment with a similar level of consistency and acceptance as those of financial performance. In this paper it is explored how standard-based evaluation methods may be used to test the underlying theory of change of microfinance, and the rate of use of existing methods in practice. Our findings suggest that social rating and social performance assessment using SPI4 are the most used methods. Nevertheless, standard-based methods are not suitable to assess the complete magnitude of microfinance social performance. Hence, microfinance social performance cannot rely on standard-based methods only, but need to use specific evaluation frameworks and indicators to fully measure microfinance effectiveness.
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publishDate 2020-11-01
publisher Universidad de Zaragoza, Cátedra de Solidaridad y Ciudadanía Global
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spelling doaj-art-5df1fb5d374543519f64552bfb0654752025-01-03T01:47:59ZengUniversidad de Zaragoza, Cátedra de Solidaridad y Ciudadanía GlobalRevista Iberoamericana de Estudios de Desarrollo2254-20352254-20352020-11-01925410810.26754/ojs_ried/ijds.351The quest for the evaluation of microfinance social performanceJavier Sierra0Fernando Rodriguez-Lopez1University of Salamanca (Spain)University of Salamanca (Spain)Several stakeholders have joined forces in recent years to facilitate consensus building on practices, indicators and standards that might serve to increase accountability and improve microfinance social performance. As a result, several sets of social standards have been developed to provide social performance assessment with a similar level of consistency and acceptance as those of financial performance. In this paper it is explored how standard-based evaluation methods may be used to test the underlying theory of change of microfinance, and the rate of use of existing methods in practice. Our findings suggest that social rating and social performance assessment using SPI4 are the most used methods. Nevertheless, standard-based methods are not suitable to assess the complete magnitude of microfinance social performance. Hence, microfinance social performance cannot rely on standard-based methods only, but need to use specific evaluation frameworks and indicators to fully measure microfinance effectiveness.http://ried.unizar.es/index.php/revista/article/viewFile/351/pdf_1microfinance; evaluation; performance; financial inclusion; latin america
spellingShingle Javier Sierra
Fernando Rodriguez-Lopez
The quest for the evaluation of microfinance social performance
Revista Iberoamericana de Estudios de Desarrollo
microfinance; evaluation; performance; financial inclusion; latin america
title The quest for the evaluation of microfinance social performance
title_full The quest for the evaluation of microfinance social performance
title_fullStr The quest for the evaluation of microfinance social performance
title_full_unstemmed The quest for the evaluation of microfinance social performance
title_short The quest for the evaluation of microfinance social performance
title_sort quest for the evaluation of microfinance social performance
topic microfinance; evaluation; performance; financial inclusion; latin america
url http://ried.unizar.es/index.php/revista/article/viewFile/351/pdf_1
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