New Paper: Diffusion of Microfinance in Development: The Role of U.S. Philanthropic Foundations

The Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future has published a new paper in its Issues in Brief series. The paper, titled “Diffusion of Microfinance in Development: The Role of U.S. Philanthropic Foundations,” was written by Emily Bryant, a Boston University doctoral candidate in Sociology and 2015 Pardee Center Graduate Summer Fellow.

Microfinance programs that provide small loans to poor people engaging in income-generating activities is a common means of supporting international development and poverty alleviation efforts. In the paper, Bryant explores the role that U.S. philanthropic foundations played in helping to create the organizational infrastructure that allowed for the diffusion of such programs. Her first-of-its-kind analysis looks at the amount and type of support that various sizes and kinds of U.S. foundations devoted to microfinance over time, and finds that the early support of older, wealthier foundations paved the way for microfinance to become a new type of poverty alleviation program starting in the late 1970s. “Understanding what characterizes foundations and their support sheds light on the diffusion of international development strategies and points to how NGO workers and development practitioners might harness foundations’ capacity for institutional entrepreneurship,” Bryant writes.

Emily Bryant is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at Boston University, where she was 2015 Pardee Center Graduate Summer Fellow. Her work has focused on international criminal tribunals as well as U.S. philanthropic support for international microfinance. Her dissertation examines the decision-making practices of American foundations engaged in international grantmaking.

Click here to download the PDF. Hard copies are free and can be requested by sending an email to pardee@bu.edu.