In Search of "Sound Practices" for Microfinance

This document aims to challenge the notion of "best practices" for all microfinance in favor of "sound practices" that are appropriate for particular organizational strategies and situations. A simple conceptual framework is offered to facilitate understanding of the current diversity of experiments with product-market pairs (e.g group-based lending to poor women struggling to earn enough for family survival). The paper concludes that:

• As the microfinance movement is still in a mode of intensive learning, we should not presume too soon what will be "best" for all product-market pairs;
• We can expect to discover a somewhat different set of sound practices for each distinct product-market pair.