State of the Campaign Report Archive
The State of the Campaign Report is an annual report that compiles outreach data from microfinance institutions (MFIs) around the world. It is a platform to promote the campaign’s goals as well as an opportunity to extend updated information in the field of microfinance to the general public and practicing institutions.
The Microcredit Summit Campaign has collected data for the State of the Microcredit Summit Campaign Report for 11 years and has verified that data for the last nine years. The process consists of (1) the circulation of Institutional Action Plans (IAPs) to thousands of practitioners requesting their most recent data; (2) a phone campaign to the 200 largest MFIs in the world to encourage submission; (3) a verification process seeking third-party corroboration of the data submitted by the largest MFIs; (4) data compilation and analysis; and (5) the writing and publication of the report. This process has, for more than a decade, produced the largest primary-source collection of data from MFIs available.
2007 Report
The 2007 report singles out special praise for Jamii Bora: a microfinance organization in Kenya that started eight years ago with loans to 50 beggars and now reaches 170,000 savers and 60,000 borrowers. The groundbreaking institution started offering health insurance seven years ago when it realized that of those clients who struggled to repay their loans, 93 percent had the same challenge—a close family member in the hospital. As a result, Jamii Bora covers all in-hospital costs for one adult and four children by linking with mission hospitals. The total cost for the family of five is just 30 cents per week or US$12 per year.
Complete Report [PDF]
2006 Report
The 2006 report includes data gathered from more than 3,100 institutions worldwide and finds that of the 82 million poorest reached, 84 percent are women. Campaign officials spoke of how the microloans touch entire families by improving nutrition, access to healthcare, and school enrollment. “The loans to 82 million poorest clients affected 410 million family members,” said Campaign Director, Sam Daley-Harris, “a number greater than the combined populations of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Belgium. These microloans are giving hope to hundreds of millions of people around the world.”
Complete Report [PDF]
2005 Report
The 2005 report highlights two studies released this year that underscore the importance of microcredit in achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Both focus on Bangladesh, the world's most saturated microfinance market. For 14 years, World Bank researcher Shahidur Khandker studied three Bangladeshi microfinance institutions (MFIs): BRAC, Grameen Bank, and RD-12, the latter a government program. Khandker found that three percent of clients left poverty each year because of their micro-loans, that one percent of non-clients left poverty due to the spillover effect of increased economic activity at the village level, and that microfinance accounted for 40 percent of the entire reduction of moderate poverty in rural Bangladesh.
Complete Report [PDF]
2004 Report
The 2004 report includes highlights of the new U.S. law and the resistance to it by some leaders in international development. The law, which was enacted in June 2003, calls for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to develop and certify two or more cost-effective poverty measurement tools that measure $1 a day poverty. The new tools are to replace loan size, which is currently used and has proven to be inadequate for poverty measurement. As Freedom from Hunger President Chris Dunford remarked, “The average loan size for entering clients tells you more about the institution making the loan than it does about the poverty level of the person receiving it.
Complete Report [PDF]
2003 Report
The 2003 report shows that 41.6 million very poor families were being reached at the end of 2002 or some 208 million family members. And if the findings were to hold for all the microfinance programs reporting worldwide, that would mean that 10.4 million people should be leaving poverty each year or more than 866,000 people each month.Complete Report [PDF]
2002 Report
The 2002 report includes findings showing that the microfinance industry can continue to grow in capacity and financial performance while remaining true to its roots to work with very poor women and offer them the services they need to move themselves and their families out of poverty:
Complete Report [PDF]
2001 Report
At the time of the 1997 Microcredit Summit, progress toward the Summit’s goal was impeded by a set of conventional wisdoms that questioned several of our core themes and challenged the pillars of the Campaign. Over the past four years, the Microcredit Summit Campaign has made significant progress in answering these challenges. In the last year, several new developments show that the conventional wisdom is changing. This report will review our work in changing the conventional wisdom, outline the survey methodology used for this report, present the findings, and summarize our work in verifying the data of an ever larger number of institutions.
Complete Report [PDF]
2000 Report
The 2000 report includes the Campaign's survey showing growth in the number of clients being served by microcredit programs. The data also suggests an increase in the number of institutions now using poverty measurements to determine the number of poorest families being served. The Campaign will continue to push for the development of simple, cost-effective measurements for determining the poverty-level of microcredit clients through the Poverty Measurement Discussion Group and the Poverty Measurement Tool Kit.
Complete Report [HTML]
1999 Report
The 1999 report includes the Campaign's survey that shows growth in the number of clients being served by microcredit programs. Determining whether this growth in the number of programs and borrowers represents an increase in the number of the poorest families being served is among the most important challenges facing the global campaign. The development of simple, cost-effective measurements for determining the poverty-level of microfinance clients will therefore continue to be addressed by the Microcredit Summit through the Poverty Measurement Discussion Group and the Poverty Measurement Tool Kit.
Complete Report [HTML]
