Microfinance Program Support

Building Individuals, Families, Relationships & Institutions  

The primary goal of TKOH-Foundations Micro-Finance Support system is to help individuals and families and as they stabilize are able to help others that they know. This creates strong relations, which as funds are raised and or repaid creates a local Financial Institution so others in a given area can be helped. This method builds community. Each person becomes and important part of the chain and is a link in the chain, which constantly grows. The chain creates the relationships and an atmosphere where people can and do walk together as a part of the support program, because we are all linked together forming a strong chain.

Chains start with one link and grow in time ranging in size from just a few hundred people to hundreds of thousands of people and the more that people become part of the chain the stronger the chain becomes to help others in other areas, thus creating a Partner Institution. Our partner institutions are the backbone of the program and each person in the program serves as a part of an outreach to others. Our success is tied to their impact and performance. As the demand for microfinance increases, these front-line institutions must be able to adapt to the changing needs of the communities they serve. To help them operate more efficiently and be more effective, we provide each partner with financial products and services that are tailored to meet their needs.

Drawing on the skills and expertise of our in-house professionals and a pool of consultants (those that are successful in the program), we work with individuals to develop a comprehensive technical assistance package, including:

• financing strategies that foster smart growth

• training and capacity-building programs that help to expand and strengthen day-to-day operations

• outreach initiatives that increase their visibility both in local area and communities

To be more effective, each person must also know how the program works and why it works in an effort to reach out and help others. This starts with restructuring beliefs that allow for growth and often times takes restructuring debt. From there income can be created from the program that will help each in the chain and the chain is a contagious support system designed to help each individual link or person in the chain. The performance is constantly monitored for social performance, which helps keep everyone connect as it helps build strong relationships by understanding the needs of others and helping each meet their individuals needs and goals. This creates perpetual motion, because success breads success and failure breads contempt.

Technical Assistance to Microfinance Institutions (Hubs)

Microfinance institutions on a local level, consist of those that have become successful in the program. These Institutions are supported by a global support staff, which may be accessed by individuals or institutions or hubs. As people see how the program works they become willing to reach out to others and become dedicated to helping others because it builds relationship and a strong chain. The chain is as strong as the weakest link, so it is everyone's best interest to help each in the chain become strong.

To insure this growth takes communication globally and we do this through the Internet and through chat rooms, which become powerful and cost effective ways of communication. That communication helps transfer ideas and help to individuals to help each accomplish what they need to accomplish in any given area across the globe. Each person in the chain becomes a working model for the benefit of the rest of the chain. The more and better communication there is the stronger the links and the stronger the chain so more can be accomplished. 

We have developed a track record of helping links become chains, which evolve into institutions that:

• Effectively help train and support users.

• Utilize cost-effective tools to measure progress through the Internet to help stay in communication so the chain stays in tact. Effective communication is a key to success, which helps the goal of developing standards and metrics for social impact performance.

• Increase efficiencies in the delivery of services.

• Achieve full cost-recovery and profitability, and utilize profits to provide better and more economical services to clients.

• Use microfinance as a platform for broad social change by delivering a wider array of financial and non-financial products and services in pursuit of poverty alleviation.

Our Technical Assistance Program offers a variety of products and services to individuals and hubs to help them reach these goals.

Technical Assistance Program

As a leading microfinance network we provide technical advisory services with the following objectives:

• Everything is always designed to benefit individuals and families, which makes servicing hubs easier.

• We provide technical assistance customized to each hubs needs, from those in the start-up phase to mature, large organizations, with a focus on promoting sustainable expansion, enhanced anti-poverty impact, and breakthrough applications of technology.

• We offer our network of partners pioneering financing strategies and creative information technology solutions, always moving them toward access of commercial capital.

• We are committed to making our tools and learning available to the wider microfinance movement, through adhering to an “open source” philosophy of sharing successful strategies.

TKOH Foundation helps individuals and hubs as they move through stages in their lifecycle. Each tier has a set of unique characteristics that typically shapes the types of products and services we provide.

Social Performance Management

Equipping hubs and each link to measure their goals.

A goal of TKOH Foundation’s work is to ensure our partners are moving their clients out of poverty after five years and to foster good practices for measuring the progress of individuals’ movement.

Hubs must show results, yet many do not have the tools to evaluate how well they are fulfilling their mission of reducing poverty, reaching people excluded from financial services, empowering, or promoting community solidarity. TKOH Foundation’s Progress Index is designed to fill that need. Built on previous efforts in the microfinance industry, the PI shows great promise.

The Progress Index

TKOH Foundation’s Progress Index (PI) is both a management and a measurement tool. It allows microfinance institutions (hubs) to better determine their needs, which programs are most effective, how quickly individuals advance to the next tiers. 

The PI, which builds on previous efforts to measure and manage hub social performance, provides an accurate and practical approach for hubs to measure how and why their clients’ living conditions change over time. It helps hubs:

• Define and adhere to their mission.
• Divide their clients into distinct poverty bands (very poor, moderately poor, and non-poor).
• Improve programs, products, and delivery of services.
• Increase their competitive edge, profitability, and ability to retain clients by responding more quickly and effectively to changes in their communities and by showing documented results.
• Provide timely and accurate information to socially responsible investors who may want to provide financial resources to their programs.

The PI is a unique composite of easy-to-collect, country-specific, non-financial indicators such as family size, the number of children attending school, the type of housing, and what the family typically eats.

The Progress Index in Action

Once a PI is built for a market, it is intended for the public good and the TKOH Foundation's "open sourcing" makes it available to all who wish to use it. Our collaboration with other key stakeholders within the microfinance industry will ensure that the PI is available for the greatest number of hubs that wish to better meet the needs of the poorest members of the communities they serve.

There is a growing interest in the microfinance industry for cost effective poverty assessment tools. The TKOH Foundation is committed to working with individuals, our partners and other key industry stakeholders to develop tools and consensus for social performance management.