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Incubator Tool Library

A collection of vetted tools and resources to help impact incubators run smarter, scale bigger, and better support their entrepreneurs.

Pollinate Impact Tool Library

Welcome to your shortcut to the good stuff.

When we say “tool”, we mean anything that helps incubators thrive—software, templates, handbooks, or any resource that lets you level up your game. We’ve curated the best for impact incubators across the Global South, so skip the search, grab what you need, and get back to making magic happen. 

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The Incubation Toolkit for Africa

  • 23 Views

The Incubation Programme Toolkit for Africa is a free, practical guide designed specifically for hubs, incubators, and ecosystem builders across Africa. It helps them design, implement, and improve incubation initiatives that deliver measurable business outcomes and stronger support for early-stage startups.

  • Category: Incubator Design
  • Type: Toolkits

Organization: FATE Foundation

How to Measure the Gender Impact of Investments: Using the 2X Challenge Indicators in Alignment with IRIS+

  • 9 Views

A guidance resource for incubators, accelerators, and investors to measure and report gender impact using the 2X Challenge criteria, aligned with IRIS+ indicators.

  • Category: Incubator Design
  • Type: Handbooks

Organization: GIIN

Gender Toolkit

  • 5 Views

Gender Toolkit is a free, practical online resource designed to help investors, companies and other stakeholders integrate gender-smart approaches into their processes and decisions. It offers guidance, tools, templates and sector-specific insights to support gender-inclusive strategies and investments — with the ultimate aim of advancing women’s economic empowerment and gender equality

  • Category: Enterprise Support & Portfolio Management
  • Type: Toolkits

Organization: British International Investment

A framework to Drive Impact

  • 4 Views

This explains how your Theory of Change can be an effective framework to drive impact. The video also highlights three points to keep in mind when creating your theory of change.

  • Category: Incubator Design
  • Type: Media Resources

Organization: DUKE

Igniting Innovation: A comprehensive handbook for incubators and accelerators

  • 2 Views

Standardized templates and guidelines can greatly assist these entities in establishing a
governance structure, defining eligibility criteria, developing application
processes, and creating agreements with startups in a consistent and
efficient manner. By adopting these resources, incubators can improve
operational efficiency, reduce the risk of non-compliance, and align their
operations with industry standards and best practices. Pg. 377 onwards

  • Category: Incubator Design
  • Type: Handbooks

Organization: Gulf Organization for Industrial Consulting (GOIC)

Lab to Market Commercialization Playbook

  • 5 Views

This resource covers the entire commercialization process in one place with highly practical tools, tips, and resources Include general and stage-specific guidance, and pertains to any university or research institution and any technology/sector, with a focus on energy & mobility

  • Category: Enterprise Support & Portfolio Management
  • Type: Handbooks

Organization: William Davidson Institute at University of Michigan

A Practitioner’s Guide to Effective Blended Finance Solutions for Social Enterprises

  • 4 Views
  • Category: Enterprise Support & Portfolio Management
  • Type: Research

Organization: Villgro

INCUBATION FUND MANAGEMENT: Investment Playbook for Startup Incubators

  • 6 Views

This playbook offers suggestive guidelines for early-stage incubators that have recently begun receiving seed grants from governments and other sources. While broadly relevant to all incubators managing an Incubation Fund, this guide would be most useful for incubators and incubation managers with limited prior experience in fund deployment and management.

  • Category: Incubator Design
  • Type: Handbooks

Organization: MeitY Startup Hub

The Circular Venture Blueprint: A Guide for ESOs

  • 3 Views

Supporting circular economy ventures calls for approaches that differ from traditional entrepreneurship support. These ventures often follow distinct growth paths, need specialised market connections, and create value in ways that mainstream metrics don’t capture.

  • Category: Incubator Design
  • Type: Handbooks

Organization: Circular Economy Innovation Cluster

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Business Incubator Managers Incubation Management Training

The Business Incubation Management Training Program was created for business incubator managers and stakeholders in developing countries and emerging markets. Through its network of certified facilitators, infoDev has helped more than one thousand people increase their understanding of business incubator models, how to finance an incubator, monitoring and evaluation, mentoring programs, and more. The training program was designed for face-to-face delivery with each module requiring one day of classroom learning.

  • Category: Incubator Design
  • Type: Trainings & Capacity Building

Organization: infoDev, World Bank & IFC

Incubator Collaborative Learnings Document

A compilation of the challenges and struggles of incubators and accelerators in the Global South as well as proposed solutions sourced from the dozens of online meetings, and in-person workshops hosted by Pollinate Impact. Spoiler Alert – Irrespective of the geographich location or the type of entrepreneur supported, the challenges and the solutions largely remain consistent across the field.

  • Category: Incubator Design
  • Type: Best Practices & Lessons Learned

Organization: Pollinate Impact

Landscape Analysis of the Uganda Innovation Ecosystem

The report provides an overview of the research on the Entrepreneurship Support Organisations (ESOs) in Uganda, how they are set up, what they offer, to whom, and how. It particularly looks at the state and opportunity of collaboration among stakeholders in the ecosystem, especially among the ESOs, but also with the public sector. It gives a list of 16 recommendations to bring the Ugandan entrepreneurship ecosystem forward and ensure that entrepreneurs get better support faster.

  • Category: Incubator Design
  • Type: Research

Organization: Response Innovation Lab & Start Up Uganda

Lean Research: Human Centered Approach to Reserach

Lean Research is an approach and an initiative to improve the practice of data collection involving people and communities in development and humanitarian contexts.

  • Category: Incubator Design
  • Type: Toolkits

Organization: D-Lab

Lean Data Approaches to Measure Social Impact

In this course, learn the Lean Data methodology, a new way to collect insights from customers in order to measure your outcomes and make decisions that maximize impact.

  • Category: Incubator Design
  • Type: Trainings & Capacity Building

Organization: Acumen

Embedding Circularity in Entrepreneurial Support: Learning from Pilot Programs

The document enlists the best practices and recommendations for incubators and accelerators to support circularity entrepreneurs. Impact Hub launched the “Circularity by Design” program in 2021 with the hypothesis that just like profitability is a design principle for most businesses, circularity can also become a design principle for enterprises. Impact Hub developed the “Embedding Circularity” toolkit for incubators and accelerators, provided capacity building to business support organizations, and validated the tools with entrepreneurs and businesses through pilot incubation and acceleration programs with 12 Impact Hubs in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe.

  • Category: Incubator Design
  • Type: Best Practices & Lessons Learned

Organization: Impact Hub

Tools for Designing Inclusive Entrepreneurship Support Programmes

The Toolkit is organised in line with the common
steps of designing and running a business support
programme. You can easily navigate these different
steps below and jump directly to where you are at,
or you can read from beginning to end to get a better
grasp of the many facets and perspectives when it
comes to inclusion and accessibility in incubation and
business support. For each step, different tools are
listed and you can pick out what best fits your reality.

  • Category: Incubator Design
  • Type: Toolkits

Organization: Impact Hub

Collection of Best Practices in Inclusive Entrepreneurship Support Programmes

The document aims to provide actionable insights for incubators & accelerators, NGOs, policymakers, funders, and other stakeholders to be applied in the design and implementation of inclusive incubation and support programs, strategies, and/or policies.

  • Category: Incubator Design
  • Type: Best Practices & Lessons Learned

Organization: Impact Hub

Toolkit for Inclusive and Relevant Business Support for Indigenous Entrepreneurs

This guide is for Indigenous support organizations who walk alongside Indigenous entrepreneurs, helping them grow ideas into realities that honor their cultural, social, and economic aspirations. It’s a starting point for aligning business support with the deep-rooted values and needs of Indigenous communities.

  • Category: Incubator Design
  • Type: Toolkits

Organization: Impact Hub

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