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 โ€œtoolโ€, we mean anything that helps incubators thriveโ€”software, templates, handbooks, or any resource that lets you level up your game. Weโ€™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.ย 

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

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Make the Most of Mentoring

Whether youโ€™re actively seeking a new mentor or simply curious about the benefits of mentoring, our โ€œMake the Most of Mentoringโ€ course will equip you with the tools and strategies needed to succeed.

Organization: The Human Edge

Tips for Sourcing a Diverse Accelerator

Vilcap and IBM share the intentionally inclusive process of reaching founders outside their traditional networks, and using an inclusive and equitable diligence process in their cohorts. Hereโ€™s what we did differently โ€“ and what any decision-maker in tech: any investor, accelerator leader or corporation, can do to reduce implicit bias when theyโ€™re working with early-stage entrepreneurs.

Organization: Vilcap & IBM

Creating an Impact Investment Ask

Diagnose a ventureโ€™s business growth readiness using a structured seven-element framework

Build a four-step impact management process aligned with investor expectations

Integrate business and impact insights to craft a compelling and credible investment ask

Communicate investment needs in a way that aligns with both financial and impact goals

Organization: CASE

Impact Investment Finance

What are impact investors looking for? This course offers a practical introduction to the impact investing marketplace. Youโ€™ll learn how the market is structured, including the roles of asset owners and asset managers, and how capital flows between them. The course explores how impact investors pursue both financial and social or environmental returns, and the different types of investors involved along with their motivations, constraints, and preferred investment vehicles.

Organization: CASE

Identifying & Qualifying Deeply Aligned Funders – Tools & Strategies

Explore tips on how to shape funder research priorities and criteria to assess funder fit and uncover the information your organization needs to support this step in the fundraising process.

Organization: Black Fox Global

Actionable Strategies for Engaging your Board

When boards are equipped with clarity, confidence, and joy in their roles, fundraising stops being a burden and starts becoming a team sport. The session walks through the core modules leaders can use to design and run their own fundraising retreat.

Organization: Black Fox Global

Grant Ready Communications

Tried and true strategies to ensure your organization is โ€˜grant readyโ€™ when you do secure invitations to submit proposals and letters of inquiry (LOIs).

Organization: Black Fox Global

Building a Fundraising Board: Recruiting and On-Boarding New Board Members

How do you then save your nonprofit and board from this quagmire? By creating a culture of success by recruiting members who can be effective, then giving them the tools to be successful.

Organization: Black Fox Global

Building Authentic Funder Relationships and Maximizing Opportunities for Funding

Explores ways to build authentic funder relationships through professional persistence.

Organization: Black Fox Global

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Accelerating Women Entrepreneurs – A Handbook for Practitioners

This handbook is an interactive resource for you, whether you want to attract
more women entrepreneurs and/or better support them, want to improve the programme
or learn from the challenges and successes of others, select the right partners to run a programme, new to entrepreneurship support programmes &
womenโ€™s empowerment

Organization: GIZ

ESO Collaborative

This platform is a community resource developed by the ESO Collaborative which brings together government, the Ghana Hubs Network, and other enterprise support organisations. It provides entrepreneurs, startups, businesses, freelancers etc. with extensive details of programmes provided by Enterprise Support Organisations (ESOs) in Ghana.

Organization: Impact Investing Ghana

Academy

The AfriLabs Academy is an initiative of AfriLabs and implemented under the AfriLabs Capacity Building Programme that is designed to equip African Hub managers and staff with the training and management skills needed to improve their ability and capacity to support the growing number of startups and MSMEs in their communities

Organization: Afrilabs

NEX Portfolio

Please find our detailed database of some of our portfolio businesses here. Our aim is to provide more connections and global network opportunities to businesses that have participated in NEX programming as well as offer market expansion opportunities.

Listing of companies, many of which are seeking out collaborators, we’ve supported in 12 countries. This database is still being enriched and more data to be added by end of March.

Organization: New Energy Nexus

Satsense App

This tool uses satellite earth observation for transparent digital monitoring reporting and verification of Natural Capital projects. It can evaluate the positive impacts of land management practices to help generate carbon, biodiversity and other green credits.

Organization: Satsense Solutions

Due Diligence Check list

Checklist of documents to put in your Data Room for a DD process

Organization: Impact Hub Abidjan

Creative Metier 4V Model Diagnostic Tool

The Creative Metier 4V Model offers socially committed impact networks, and their funders, the opportunity to significantly accelerate their impact by drawing on our work with national, regional and global networks.

It provides a diagnostic, a 360 view and a fresh perspective to strengthen network performance and impact.

The 4V Model Diagnostic Tool benchmarks your network now, informs strategic planning, sets annual priorities, reviews and refocuses, and stretches thinking about what might be possible.

Organization: Creative Metier

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

Whatโ€™s working in entrepreneur support in Uganda?

โ€œThe whole is greater than the sum of its partsโ€ 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 weโ€™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 organisationsโ€™ financial, impact, and operational viability.

Organization: Village Capital

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