The current community of microfinance funders comprises roughly 40 public agencies, 20 foundations, and 60 funds and other microfinance investment vehicles. International banks, private investors, international non-governmental organizations, and individual donors raise the numbers even higher. Perhaps surprisingly, however, there are no aggregate, reliable numbers on the amount of international
... [Show full abstract] funding for microfinance. Many of the largest microfinance funders, especially the public multilateral development agencies, know little about either the overall size or performance of their own microfinance portfolios. Various factors contribute to this situation, including the challenges of collecting and aggregating the data from decentralized operations, weak tracking systems, diffuse staff accountability, and misaligned incentives. How can we know if aid is effective or ineffective if we do not even know how much we are spending? Assessing value for money or impact is impossible without the core baseline information on money actually invested, as well as the performance of the activities funded. Central aggregation and analysis of data on both the "how much money" and the "how well does the portfolio perform" questions seems to be a key driver of improved aid effectiveness in microfinance. Most importantly, calls for more money—or less money—are imprudent when little is known about what kind of money is available, let alone whether it is structured in the most useful way and the results achieved. To examine the quantity, flows, and quality of funding for microfinance, CGAP launched a study of funding flows in the summer of 2005. 1 The 1 The numbers presented in this report were collected from 2004 to 2006. The data available on microfinance investment vehicles dates from 2003, numbers on public bi-and multi-lateral agencies are from 2004, and for development investors from 2005. All data is self-reported.