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. 

Share your tool! If you have a tool, template, or resource that others could benefit from, submit it for review. 

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Organization: Impact Hub

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Impact-OS (Powered by Impact Amplifier)

Impact-OS (IOS) helps organisations create digital accelerator programmes in Africa.

IOS provides technology to investors, Enterprise Support Organisations (ESOs), and accelerators to setup, white label and manage scalable online programmes to entrepreneurs, particularly focused on grant and investment readiness.

Organization: Impact Amplifier

What Ugandan ESOs Can Teach the World

What’s working in entrepreneur support in Uganda?

“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts” is a phrase associated with the principles behind entrepreneurship ecosystem development. When ecosystem actors collaborate, the value they create by working together is larger than if they work independently. This certainly rings true with what we’ve experienced working with more than 170 fellow Entrepreneur Support Organisations (ESOs) from 40 countries since 2015.

Sub-Saharan Africa is a hub for innovation. The continent has the highest rate of entrepreneurship globally, partly because of its young and digitally literate population. The support provided by tech hubs, incubators, and accelerators is invaluable. Depending on which resources you reference, Africa has somewhere between 600 to 1300 of these organisations across the continent and they provide the contextualised support that African entrepreneurs need to grow and
scale.

This report shares key insights drawn from the Ugandan ecosystem and a practical set of exercises developed in close collaboration with ESO leaders who have tried and tested building out their organisations’ financial, impact, and operational viability.

Organization: Village Capital

Unlocking Pipeline Africa. A Playbook for Entrepreneur Support in Africa

The Unlocking Pipeline Playbook compiles lessons, case studies, and trends gathered from our pioneering Village Capital’s Communities Africa program, which brought together leading African entrepreneur ecosystem builders to share best practices.

Organization: Village Capital

SMARTER SYSTEMS: How Tweaking Your Diligence Process Can Unlock Overlooked opportunities ACCELERATOR IMPLEMENTATION GUIDE

We found that there are discrepancies in how investors evaluate men-led and women-led
startups, potentially leading them to overlook promising startups and overestimate less
promising startups. This implementation guide outlines three steps we found that accelerators can incorporate into their selection processes to consistently evaluate all startups more accurately.

Organization: Village Capital

Capital Explorer

The objective of Capital Explorer is to equip and support entrepreneurs in exploring which funding options may be a good fit for their business and help them identify capital providers offering those options.

Organization: Village Capital

Product improvement tool

Use behavioral science principles to share user insights

Organization: Maha Accelerator

SCALE Framework

Small and growing businesses (SGBs) profoundly impact economies and
livelihoods, particularly in emerging markets. A growing body of evidence demonstrates that enterprise support organizations (ESOs) create jobs and increase the productivity of SGBs.
However, the impact of ESO programs varies considerably.

In 2013, Argidius set out to identify what works best in BDS to enable SGBs to
grow and create employment. In doing so, they drew not only from their own
portfolio but also from extensive academic literature and the experience of
outside programs.Five fundamental considerations emerged that distinguished high-performing Enterprise Support programs (those that cost-effectively delivered SGB growth). These five considerations have been codified as SCALE.

Organization: Argidius Foundation

Enable

Making entrepreneur support affordable through the Enable platform. A platform that equips ESOs to provide targeted and personalized support to hundreds of MSMEs simultaneously.

Organization: ONOW

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