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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HerVenture

HerVenture is an award-winning app designed to fit business learning into the busy lives of women entrepreneurs. It offers essential business training and support on topics like launching a business, accessing finance, expanding market access, e-commerce, and digital marketing. The app targets women in low or middle-income countries who are starting or running micro or small businesses in any sector.

HerVenture provides a personalized learning journey for each entrepreneur, delivering content in bite-sized, easily digestible formats like swipe-able cards and quizzes, which can be accessed offline. The app also facilitates networking among users and informs them about local business events. Through HerVenture, women gain foundational business knowledge, skills, confidence, and support to start, grow, and digitize their businesses.

Organization: Cherie Blair Foundation for Women

Creating programs for Women Entrepreneurs with Disabilities

This is a guide with real life stories of women in Cambodia living in the coastal communities who rely on fishing as their primary
source of income, who are part of a program co-implemented by Agile Development Group and Aide Et Action Cambodia(AEA) in the purpose of improving their socio-economic development

Organization: Agile DG

Disability Innovation:Empowering Enterpreneurs

The report delves into the current state of the disability innovation ecosystem, highlighting the accomplishments and the importance of the perspective of leaders within the innovation ecosystem while identifying avenues for potential improvement.

Organization: Village Capital

Global Report on Assitive Technology

The Global report on assistive technology presents a comprehensive dataset and analysis of current assistive technology access, drawing the attention of governments and civil society to the need for, and benefit of, assistive technology, including its return on investment. The Global report sets out ten recommendations for improving access to assistive technology

Organization: WHO - World Health Organization

Disability Etiquette

This is a guide used to help ESO’s understand the acceptable language and behaviour when working with persons who are abled differently. From those who are visually impaired, physical impairment or mental impairment

Organization: Disability.in

Decision Making Tool

Software can help make important decisions efficiently and fairly, and create powerful decision-making tools you can trust. This can be applied by ESOs in making decisions related to enterprise selection for a cohort.

Organization: 1000Minds

Women-Inclusive Return on Investment Calculations

This work addresses a gap in evidence from firms in lower—and middle-income countries (LMICs) on the ROI of women’s inclusion. This series profiles select small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that have implemented women-inclusive (WI) initiatives and can demonstrate returns on investment (ROI).

The case study series features:

1) Grean World: How an Ethiopian energy company utilized female sales agents to attract female consumers and tackle last mile distribution.
2) Okeba: How a Uganda agribusiness provided care support to its staff and ultimately reduced costs.

Other reports include:
3) Navigating Firm Selection for Women-Inclusive ROI—A Learning Note: Provides key insights MSP gained from the process of vetting and selecting companies for WI-ROI.
4) Closing the Gap: A Synthesis Report on the Cases for the ROI of Women’s Inclusion: This report includes the findings, benefits, and considerations of the WI-ROI approach, which can be applied during implementation and to continue building on the evidence for returns on women-inclusive investments.

Organization: William Davidson Institute at University of Michigan

Mentoring Skills & Practice Course

Learn and practice the science and art of impactful mentoring and coaching with our self-paced Mentoring Skills and Practice Course. You’ll learn how to build meaningful relationships and have purposeful conversations, provide constructive feedback, and create a safe and supportive environment where people can learn, grow and perform.

Organization: The Human Edge

Mentoring Question Toolkit

Compilation of a number of impactful mentoring questions for you to explore together, support each other during difficult times, deepen your mentoring relationships and enhance your mentoring conversations. These questions are also excellent if you wish to self-mentor yourself and identify and learn about your own interferences, needs and areas of opportunity and growth.

Organization: The Human Edge

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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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