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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Scaling and Replication: A way to grow your impact

In this toolkit, you will find useful concepts and indications that can help you navigate
the replicability and scalability worlds. On the one hand, we’ve realized there is a need
for social entrepreneur support organizations (SESOs) to acquire techniques and tools to
integrate in their offer of technical services specific tools and methodologies to support
the social entrepreneurs (SEs) that are ready and mature enough, in their growth path.
On the other hand, this tool wants to be of support for the SEs that are interested in
understanding the different essential steps that need to be undertaken, to assess their
readiness to start a replicating or scaling strategy and to choose the best option to
achieve one of two growth options.

Organization: Impact Hub & MedUp!

Toward Inclusive Access: Navigating Gender and Disability Barriers in Entrepreneurship Support and Financing

This publication focuses on women entrepreneurs with disabilities’ access to business
support and financial resources. The objective is to increase economic opportunity for all
and foster inclusive growth. This report may be particularly useful for business development
organisations and financial service providers and investors, as well as policymakers seeking
to understand the interplay between gender, disability, and entrepreneurship.

Organization: UN ESCAP & Impact Hub

Incubator Toolkit

Launching an incubation program for Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) requires a strategic approach to nurture and accelerate their growth. The incubator Toolkit is designed to guide incubators in developing comprehensive programs tailored to the unique needs of these MSMEs. From initial assessment to post-incubation support, this toolkit equips you with methodologies and best practices, to foster innovation and improve their business capabilities. This toolkit empowers incubators to not only guide MSMEs towards success but also to adapt and evolve with the ever-changing business landscape, ensuring long-lasting impact & resilience.

Organization: Instellar, Koalisi Ekonomi Membumi & SEED Indonesia

Smarter Systems Accelerator Implementation Guide

This implementation guide outlines three steps we found that accelerators
can incorporate into their selection processes to consistently evaluate all startups more
accurately.

Organization: IFC / Vilcap / WeFi

Lessons from accelerators supporting women-led startups in emerging markets

This publication contains case studies, strategies, and practical advice from five accelerators and entrepreneur support organizations awarded by ScaleX for their successful efforts to help women-led startups in emerging markets overcome barriers and secure capital post-acceleration.

Organization: IFC

Enabling inclusive and empowering workplaces for migrant women through entrepreneurial support. A guide for Business Support Organisations

This toolkit is about equipping BSOs with principles, tools, activities and
methods that they can use with the entrepreneurs and ventures they support,
so that enterprises can make their workplaces more inclusive and empowering
for migrant women.

Organization: Impact Hub

Embedding Circularity

A practical learning journey for incubators and accelerators to integrate circular design principles into their entrepreneur support services. This online curriculum will help you identify ways to enable a more circular and sustainable economy by supporting startup and growth stage ventures to apply circular design principles early on.
You will also be generating a pipeline of innovation for key industries and value chains that need to become more circular to build for a just and sustainable society.

Organization: Impact Hub

The Circularity Toolkit

This toolkit offers insights, tools and methodologies for Entrepreneur Support Organizations (ESOs) to take a Circular Economy lens to their entrepreneur support programs, particularly incubators and accelerators, in order to mainstream circular design principles across small and growing businesses regardless of whether they are social, environmental or profit-driven.

You can use this toolkit to develop a program explicitly focused on supporting ventures with Circular Economy solutions, or to embed circular design principles into other programs that aren’t explicitly focused on the Circular Economy.

Organization: Impact Hub

Incubation Tools and Templates

A collection of tools and templates that guide you in the process and activities of incubation as laid out in the Innovation Playbook by Villgro Philippines

Organization: Villgro Philippines & USAID

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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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