Many factors put people at risk of long-term unemployment, including poverty and social exclusion, poor basic skills levels, discrimination, cultural distance from the mainstream labour market and poor local social capital.

Social impact investing, impact investing for short throughout this report, encompasses environmental impact. It is at the core of a broad ‘impact continuum’, that runs from philanthropy to responsible and sustainable investment, which includes all those seeking to achieve positive impact.

This guide is the result of previous work on governance carried out by CERISE members and based on field experience done by microfinance partners. IFAD and GTZ provided follow up support which focused on devising a simple, practical and user-friendly operational tool which would be of use to people involved in microfinance.

This guide is an attempt to demystify the financing options open to both new, and practicing, social entrepreneurs. It may also point these entrepreneurs in the direction of financial strategies that might not otherwise have occurred to them.

The EU Programme for Employment and Social Innovation – EaSI1 – is established to contribute to the implementation of the Europe 2020 Strategy, including its headline targets, Integrated Guidelines and flagship initiatives, by providing financial support for the Union’s objectives in terms of promoting a high level of quality and sustainable employment, guaranteeing adequate and decent social protection, combating social exclusion and poverty and improving working conditions.

Firms allocate their limited resources between two fundamental processes of creating value (i.e., innovating, pro- ducing, and delivering products to the market) and appropriating value (i.e., extracting profits in the marketplace). Although both value creation and value appropriation are required for achieving sustained competitive advantage, a firm has significant latitude in deciding the extent to which it emphasizes one over the other. What effect does strategic emphasis (i.e., emphasis on value creation versus value appropriation) have on firm’s financial perfor- mance?

The New Microfinance Handbook reflects the current frontier of our collective thinking and experience. It starts with the need to understand the demand side. Poor households in the informal economy are producers and consumers. They need access to the full range of financial services to generate income, build assets, smooth consumption, and manage risks. The global financial inclusion agenda recognizes these broader needs.

This final report is the culmination of a year’s work on financial services provision and prevention of financial exclusion by experts in fourteen countries in Europe.

The term “Social Capital” is used by academics and practitioners to describe various elements that interact to steer and create societal or community value. Before addressing the specifics of social capital investment and returns as they will be discussed in this paper, it should be recognized that there are many types of capital. At a minimum, there is financial capital, physical capital, human capital, social capital, natural capital and manufactured capital. It is important to understand that current social capital discussions take place within this larger capital context.

The Study reviewed current available literature regarding FEI establishment and implementation. This was complemented by inputs from an internet survey, national interviews in the 27 Member States and Croatia, and a detailed analysis of a representative sample of 50 revolving fund case studies.