Case study
The Argidius Foundation
Catalysing new donor practices to create long-term impact
Overview
The Argidius Foundation has a long history of tackling poverty through enterprise development in emerging economies. They believe local Enterprise Support Organisations (ESOs) that deliver a wide range of services and support to community enterprises are key to unlocking entrepreneurship. But the usual ways donors engage with these organisations can stifle the growth and innovation of ESOs.
As a champion of best practice in this sector, Argidius approached Snowmelt intending to highlight this issue to catalyse a new sector-wide conversation. Drawing on Argidius’s deep partner network, we spoke with 40+ collaborators working closely with them to deliver an extensive research program and build a coalition of interested organisations. This resulted in a highly-engaged group of partner organisations to help support this mission, and a report Sustain Impact: Donor practices to grow enterprise support organizations. Following publication of Sustain Impact, Snowmelt continued to partner with Argidius by activating its network of supporters through events and tailored translations of the research to address local needs.
Awards
The challenge
Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are pivotal in spurring economic growth, especially in emerging economies. They bring innovation, job opportunities and diversity to the economic landscape, and are often drivers of social or environmental change. To thrive, SMEs draw on Business Development Services (BDS), provided by a wide range of ESOs, such as incubators, accelerators, professional services firms and chambers of commerce to provide mentorship, advisory services and network building.
Argidius recognised that donor funding, when restrictive, has the potential to dampen the growth of local ESOs and keep them in a vicious cycle of grant dependence with limited incentive to invest in themselves and improve their effectiveness. Donors also often struggle to recognise the diversity of ESOs and their different growth trajectories, and the ways their own practices shape these outcomes. Argidius and many of their partners understand that changing how ESOs are funded by donors could have enormous impacts on the scale and sustainability of valuable services that help SMEs grow and create jobs.
Argidius approached Snowmelt with the goal of highlighting this issue to catalyse a new sector wide conversation. Snowmelt was engaged to understand the various perspectives on the topic, synthesising them into understandable patterns of growth in order to influence the behaviour of donors over time.
While we had a broad sense of where we wanted to get to, Snowmelt worked with us iteratively to forge a path and message which is now being taken up by others. It’s been a pleasure working with Snowmelt.
What we did
Distilling this vast and ambiguous topic into a clear argument and actionable recommendations was critical. But creating the right conditions for donors to understand and act on these was just as important. The emerging aim was to influence donor behaviours to better support ESOs over the long term. To achieve this, we worked with Argidius to develop a clear theory of change; anticipating the potential follow-up and parallel activities, and identifying the critical elements and their prioritisation. To bring this to life,Snowmelt collaborated closely with Argidius and their partners to develop and run a participatory program of activities to transform broad questions into a coalition of engaged actors. The process culminated in a research report with collateral that captured the actionable frameworks, illustrative cases, and clear recommendations.
Key activities
- Created a theory of change to validate the approach to influence donor behaviour
- Explored the growth pathways of ESOs through the metaphor of a tree, creating a visual report that captured the different dynamics at play within the sector
- Conducted a series of interviews, workshops and conversations with 40+ participants from leading ESOs and bi-lateral, and multi-lateral donors across the world
- Conducted workshops to validate early findings with participant-contributors
- Created a coalition of interested actors engaged around the topic for dissemination activities
- Documented 7 case studies evidencing our findings, exploring the different donor relationships that have enabled leading ESOs to create impact at scale across the world
- Translated the research into actionable and practical recommendations for donors to integrate into their funding practices
Outcomes
including USAID, FMO, IDB and the European Commission, leading to follow-on projects and funding reallocation towards ESO development
the summary of the report exists in 3 languages, shared with dissemination partners to help enrich global conversation and dialogue.
The Sustain Impact report is pivotal for this sector. I think in the future we'll look back and see that this is the moment where things started to change.
Project Insights
- Metaphors are incredibly powerful in communicating complex ideas
- Building the movement is the real outcome
- Donor relationships are challenging in many sectors
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Metaphors are incredibly powerful for communicating complex ideas
We use the metaphor of a tree to explore the interconnectedness of organisational development and complexities of ESOs growth. Mapping their external and internal-facing activities to be ‘above’ or ‘below-ground’, we were able to explore further on how donor funding was needed to support an ESO not just with the program they were delivering, but also their internal operations and systems. Metaphors are a great way to make complex relationships and dynamics resonate with an audience of diverse interests and motives.
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Building the movement is the real outcome
Argidius has always been focused on long-term outcomes. They saw this work as part of a decade-long horizon of change, a deeply systemic perspective. Our work is only the first step in creating the momentum and giving licence to the organisations who can continue the conversation. Central to our approach was providing these advocates the tools for success in activating their own networks and amplifying our research findings in tangible ways.
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Donor relationships are challenging in many sectors
The dynamics of donors and ESOs is something that extends beyond the sector. Where a donor has a large power imbalance with program delivery organisations, there will always be these dynamics in place. In Australia, for example, NFPs working in energy transition research, are also starved of resources to develop themselves as organisations, trapping them in the same vicious cycles.
