Scaling High-Impact Innovations of Social Entrepreneurs Annual Report Year 5

As an implementing partner, Mercy Corps screens, investigates, evaluates, and proposes high-potential candidates; provides selected subrecipients with funding; and manages implementation on behalf of USAID for its portion of this program. The goal of the Alliance is to showcase and bring to scale high-impact, sustainable, and proven innovations that will produce systems-level change in the developing world. Three strategic objectives are stated in Mercy Corps' Performance Monitoring Plan: partners effectively fund social innovations that are at critical points for scale and transformational impact; Alliance Partners balance individual mandates and leverage resources to collaborate on the implementation of the Alliance in accordance with the results framework; and the Alliance supports social entrepreneurs to demonstrate the impact of their approach and catalyzes broad adoption of better practices and more effective programs across the social sector. During Year 5 of the IIA, Mercy Corps completed funding rounds six and seven, signing subawards with Fundación Capital, Living Goods, and VisionSpring. The subawards totaled $5.6 million and aimed to scale financial education initiatives, community health promoter networks, and global partnerships wholesale distribution channels. Mercy Corps conducted several site visits, providing training on USAID regulations and mid-term monitoring for existing subawardees. The organization also provided technical assistance to build capacity and facilitated connections within USAID. Mercy Corps made significant improvements to the IIA's Aggregate Impact Dashboard, making it a more useful and rich tool to communicate impact across the portfolio. The organization worked with IIA partners to ensure that all needed activities were conducted to assess the impact of the portfolio and the IIA partnership itself, known as the IIA Programmatic Review. New activities were undertaken on both fronts, and decisions will be made with partners in the coming year as to which activities will be added to the review of the IIA and/or promoted externally. The IIA partnered with the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) at Duke University and launched four knowledge products under the brand of Scaling Pathways. Since the series launched in May, all IIA partners have participated in communications activities to promote this work and the specific lessons for social enterprises and the funders that support them. Scaling Pathways has been well received by its target audiences, and IIA partners decided to pursue a second phase of this work during the final year of the IIA. Mercy Corps' Performance Monitoring Plan outlines three levels of success: Mercy Corps' management of the partnership activities and USAID's funds distributed to recipient organizations; Aggregate program results across all recipient organizations, measured using the Aggregate Impact Dashboard; and individual program results, measured using the Award Monitoring Plan (AMP). The organization will continue to work towards these goals in the coming year, with a focus on refining the Aggregate Impact Dashboard and finalizing the re-ordering of indicators in the AMP.