Strive Community is two: Reflecting on another year of meaningful progress

It’s been another exciting year for Strive Community. As we approach our second anniversary, we’ve had a chance to reflect on the progress and achievements we’ve realized alongside our partners around the globe in empowering small businesses for a digital future.

We are increasing our reach and engagement with small businesses through digital content and solutions…

When we launched Strive Community two years ago, our goal was to support the resilience and growth of five million micro- and small enterprises around the world with innovative digital solutions. Earlier this year, we announced that we surpassed that original goal. Today, we’ve reached more than 7.2 million micro- and small enterprises with digital content and solutions. We could not have achieved this without the innovative work of our partners, like MESH, who have grown their online community of young, informal entrepreneurs in Kenya to more than 150,000 members, or Boost Capital, who reached more than 5,000 micro- and small entrepreneurs with business education content and successfully showed that small business customers who engage with this educational content are better financial service customers.

Upskilling small business owners was a key focus of our year one programs, and we’ve also seen positive reach and engagement from these activities around the globe. In Vietnam, more than one million small businesses viewed training content developed by our partner WISE. Thanks to our partnership with superapp Grab in South East Asia, more than 125,000 drivers and merchants across three countries have watched our micro-learning videos.

…and we are learning a lot along the way.

Which digital channels and strategies have been most effective at reaching and engaging small businesses in their journey to growth and greater resilience? This question was at the heart of our midterm evaluation this past year, allowing us to reflect upon the most significant learnings from our work thus far. These lessons, which we shared in a four-part blog series, included:

• One of the most effective ways to reach small businesses with digital tools and solutions is through existing, active small business communities on social media. (Read the post.)
• One of the most successful ways to get small businesses to engage in greater depth with digital content or solutions is placing content on platforms where small businesses go to learn (like a learning management system or YouTube) and in trusted small business communities. (Read the post.)
• Combining “tech and touch” approaches to support small businesses leads to greater adoption of best practices and overall business growth. (Read the post)
• Digital content should be peer-led, tailored, concise, rewarding, and timely for small businesses. (Read the post.)

Our partners have also shared some of the lessons they have learned, including how to make social commerce work better for small businesses in the Philippines, how to leverage personas to develop better money habits for micro-entrepreneurs in Brazil, and how an IOT-enabled dispensing system for washing powder can support Kenyan micro-retailers in increasing revenue. You can stay up-to-date with these and other insights by subscribing to our newsletter.

Our community of small business supporters is growing.

We now have more than 25 Strive Community partners implementing programs around the world and helping us achieve small business impact at scale. Most recently, we launched a program in the Philippines with B2B e-commerce platform &frnds that will explore behavioral science techniques and nudges to drive the digital adoption of micro-retailers on their platform. Further, the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth has also launched a series of dedicated country-specific Strive programs, including in the Czech Republic, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, the UK, and the USA.

We successfully closed on the second round of our Innovation Fund, this time focused on innovative digital solutions that support small businesses’ growth in the areas of Environmental Sustainability and Data for Market Access. We received more than 500 applications and have selected our winners, who will be announced in the coming weeks. Strive USA successfully closed on their inaugural innovation fund as well, focused on elevating and accelerating promising ideas for strengthening the small business ecosystem through digital and data-first approaches. Additionally, our LinkedIn community has more than doubled in the past year. If you haven’t already, we encourage you to join us there!

We are charting evidence on the impact of digital and data-first interventions on small businesses.

We recently launched the Small Business Evidence Map, which charts the findings from more than 100 studies covering 23 types of digital interventions, products, and services targeting small businesses against seven outcomes and impacts. It’s the first interactive open tool to do so, and we invite small business support organizations to explore the evidence to guide their programmatic and strategic decision-making. In the coming weeks, we’ll publish a blog series looking closer at key findings and insights derived from our Evidence Map (more info here).

We are continuing to build our knowledge base on small business best practices.

Learning is core to Strive Community, and our knowledge base of best practices and lessons on supporting small businesses continues to grow. This year, we published three new insight briefs focused on digital financial services for small businesses: one about embedded finance, another on consumer protection (written by the Center for Financial Inclusion), and a third looking closer at women-owned small businesses. Our partners have also contributed to our knowledge base, sharing practical tips and valuable lessons learned from their programs. All of these insights are available in our library, and we encourage you to explore them.

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Looking ahead, we are shifting our focus toward innovations that increase access to finance and digital markets in addition to digitize operations for small businesses. Stay tuned for launches of some exciting new programs! We continue to seek partnerships with new organizations to help us deliver impact, test innovative digital solutions, and share learnings on supporting small businesses going digital. Please reach out if you’d like to learn more about our work.