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Working Groups

The working groups of the SPTF are as follows:

Universal Standards for SPM Working Groups:

  • Social goals, target clients & client monitoring
  • Governance, staff commitment to social goals, and SR to staff
  • Products,services, delivery channels and models that meet client needs
  • Balancing social and financial returns (formerly: responsible financial performance)

Social Investors

Microfinance Associations (MFA)

Good Practices in Social Performance Management

Gender


Universal Standards for SPM Working Groups

Four Standards working groups will each revise one or two sections of the current SPTF Universal Standards for Social Performance Management. The primary output of each working group will be a proposal to the SPTF for the final version of the Standards.  This proposal is due in January 2012.

In June 2011, at the SPTF Annual Meeting, members discussed the Standards in several formats, including well-attended breakout group discussions. The working groups are a formal continuation of these discussions.

This input will be combined with that of the five working groups and the standards will be finalized by February 2012 and benchmarks will be completed by the next SPTF Annual Meeting, June 2012.

The four Standards working groups are:

Social goals, target clients & client monitoring, led by Natalie Domond

Governance, staff commitment to social goals, and SR to staff, led by Anita Campion

Products and services that meet client needs, led by Chris Linder

Balancing social and financial returns, led by Tony Sheldon

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Social Investors

Led by: David Dewez (Incofin), Ging Ledesma (Oikocredit), and Antonique Koning (CGAP)

The Social Investors Working Group aims at advancing transparency on social performance in microfinance investments. The working group’s main activities are identified and prioritized by investors at the annual SPTF meeting and are as follows:

  • Exchange information on investor practices to advance social performance and client protection.
  • Enhance transparency on investors’ ESG performance and promote MIV ratings.
  • Harmonise social performance reporting requirements for MFIs.
  • Coordinate different responsible investment and social performance initiatives involving investors.
  • Engage with other related investor initiatives such as UN PRI, LUXflag labels and impact investing community.
  • Provide investor perspective and guidance for SPTF activities in general and evaluate the implications of other SPTF working group activities on investors.

Updates from the Social Investor Working Group

  • Next Social Investor Roundtable: Thursday, 16 February 2012, in Paris, France.  At the meeting, the group will take stock of investors’ efforts to integrate client protection and social performance concerns into policies and operations and help change practices on the ground. Specifically, the discussion will focus on progress made and hard nuts that still need cracking in each of the following action groups:
    • (i) reasonable covenants,
    • (ii) collective action against over-indebtedness,
    • (iii) harmonization of due diligence on social performance questions,
    • (iv) implementation of the Principles for Investor in Inclusive Finance
    Please RSVP to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .
  • From the 2011 Investor Roundtable at the SPTF Annual Meeting:
    Dear colleagues,

    We would like to thank you all for participating in the Microfinance Social Investor Meeting hosted by the SPTF Social Investors Group and CGAP last month in Den Bosch.
    You all showed an openness and willingness to share and learn from one another to make our investments more responsible. We hereby send you the report of the meeting which includes rich notes on examples of implementation of the Principles for Investors in Inclusive Finance (PIIF). We also attach the presentations from the meeting.
    Several of you expressed interest in exchanging action plans on implementation. To get us started Incofin, SNS and Triodos already shared their action plan. They are uploaded on the PRI intranet site that is only accessible to PIIF and PRI signatories (http://intranet.unpri.org/index.php?fuseaction=posts.post&post_id=7503&category_id=3). Other investors are invited to send their action plans either to us or directly to Emilie Goodall at the PRI Secretariat who can also assist with access to the site ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ).
    The more in-depth discussions resulted in an interest to continue working on two existing action groups and create two new ones to follow up on ideas discussed at the meeting. You are all encouraged to sign up for these groups and together agree on a work plan for the year.
    • 1. Due diligence tools sharing – led by Christophe Bochatay of Triple Jump, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
    • 2. Overindebtedness – led by Ximena Escobar de Nogales of Blue Orchard, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  
    • 3. Responsible covenants – led by Dina Pons of Incofin, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
  • 4. PIIF sharing learning on implementation and developing assessment framework – led by Antonique Koning, CGAP, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.


The Social Investor Group will continue to provide a platform for investors to communicate, exchange,and act in concert to send a strong signal that social performance is valued. Investors are encouraged to be proactive and participate in the action groups throughout the year to achieve progress towards the next annual meeting.

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Microfinance Associations (MFA) Working Group

Global Facilitator: Cara Forster, The SEEP Network

Regional Facilitators:

Asia: Zahra Khalid, PMN

Africa: Davy-Serge Azakpame, AFMIN

Eastern Europe and Central Asia: Ewa Bankowska, MFC

Latin America and Caribbean: Kenlor Howells, REDCOM

Middle East and North Africa: Nancy Samy, Sanabel

Participants:  Representatives from 50 associations participate in the MFA Working Group.  These associations are usually represented by the association’s Director and/or its Social Performance Officer.

Asia: 20 representatives from 12 networks, 19 participants from NGOs

Africa: 30 representatives from 21 networks, 8 participants from NGOS

Middle East and North Africa: 2 representatives from 2 networks, 1 participant from NGO

Eastern Europe and Central Asia: 11 representatives from 8 networks, 4 participants from NGOs

Latin America and Caribbean: 7 representatives from 7 networks, 21 participants from NGOs

Totals: 70 participants from 50 networks, 53 participants from NGOs

The purpose of the MFA Working Group is to:

  • Advance social performance management for networks,
  • Promote peer exchange of learning across regions and among stakeholders, and
  • Draw attention to emerging challenges and opportunities regarding social performance nationally, regionally, and globally, from the practitioners' perspective.

The MFA Working Group's priority areas in the current year 2011-2012 are:

Universal Standards – All of the regions have committed to sending the SPTF’s Universal Standards out to those MFAs who are members of the SPWG and who will pass it on to their MFI members for review and comment.  SEEP will manage the collection, consolidation, and transmission to SPTF of this input.

Awareness Raising and Capacity Building – Several regions (Africa, Asia, EECA) are focused on hosting workshops for their members on social performance topics such as SPM, client protection, PPI, reporting to MIX etc.

Certification – Some regions are exploring options for how to move certification forward for their staff and members.  Latin America is developing a set of manuals and pilots on certification of SPM in their region, while other regions’ MFA staffs are pursuing certification as Smart Assessors.

Please contact Cara Forster at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for further information or to get involved.

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Good Practices in Social Performance Management

Led by: Amelia Greenberg (SPTF)
Advised by: Christian Loupeda (Imp-Act Consortium)

Purpose: To identify and share good practices in social performance among all stakeholders in the microfinance industry. At the Social Performance Task Force annual meeting in Den Bosch, the Netherlands, in June 2011, Task Force members voted to making "sharing of good practices" a priority for SPTF work in the upcoming year.

Activities:

    6 events / projects completed during the year, roughly one every two months.  Ideas include the following:

    • expanding and updating the case study database
    • webinars to share particularly compelling case studies
    • writing papers that analyze outcomes in a particular area of social performance (e.g., staff incentives) across several different case studies
    • working with organizations conducting randomized control trials (RCTs) to suggest promising organizations for them to study and/or to identify and highlight some of their more relevant results to share with the SPTF
    • presenting at conferences
    • presenting in-house or via webex to targeted audience (e.g., key investors)
    • commissioning case studies in key areas in which data thus far are minimal

    Meeting Notes:

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      Gender

      Led by: Janiece Greene (Women’s World Banking)

      Vision

      The Gender Working Group is charged with promoting to the industry the importance and value of gender as a critical component of social performance management, and for ensuring that gender-based performance continues to remain a priority for the SPTF.

      Objectives

      Identify, aggregate and disseminate relevant and practical gender-based resources, tools, and best practice methodologies (e.g., gender/social audit tools, social investment funds with a gender angle) that will help MFIs, investors, and donors to systematically improve and demonstrate the value (financial and social) of focusing on women.

      Advocate for the expansion of the existing set of gender performance indicators used by the industry.

      Highlight successful non-profit and for-profit financial institutions that are effectively serving the women’s market.

      Activities for 2011-2012

      1. Gender and the Universal Standards for Social Performance – As part of the advocacy role of the Gender Working Group, we would like to ensure that the final Universal Standards include a distinct gender perspective. We therefore propose creating a short position paper that will outline the Gender Working Group’s vision for how gender performance will be built into the Universal Standards. In addition, we would like to encourage members of the Gender Working Group to join the various Universal Standards working groups in order to ensure that our gender perspective is included throughout the development process. WWB will be joining the Social Goals & Target Clients and Products and Services groups.

      2. Gender Resource Guide – Our Working Group also seeks to “identify, aggregate and disseminate relevant and practical gender-based resources, tools, and best practice methodologies.” In order to achieve this objective, we would like to propose creating a comprehensive list of gender performance resources (industry initiatives, case studies, etc.), many of which we’ve already begun gathering, and make the guide publicly available on the SPTF website.  The guide will also be circulated to SPTF member organizations.

      Meeting Notes:

      Upcoming Events

      • Next working group meeting: Wednesday, 11 Jan. 2012, at 10:00 am (EST).

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