Impact Advisory
Caribou works with funders, implementing partners, financial service providers, platforms, and other impact-driven organizations to answer this question and translate ambition into practical design.
Our work spans both program-level design and client-level advisory.
- At the program level, we work to define the foundational architecture: the ambition and additionality, operating model, use of funds, partnership strategy, sourcing and eligibility criteria, governance structure, and measurement, reporting, and learning frameworks.
- At the client or partner level, we provide targeted advisory support to strengthen products, services, and delivery models, for example, supporting financial service providers in designing more inclusive credit models for micro- and small enterprises, or facilitating partners’ adoption of digital tools and services to better meet the needs of underserved users.
Every effective program or impact initiative starts with an essential question: what are we trying to do, and why?
We bring rigorous problem-solving, deep domain knowledge, and a realistic, evidence-led view of what works in complex systems. Our outputs are not conceptual exercises. They are working blueprints, recommendations, and advisory processes that clients and partners can activate in real-world settings.
What to expect
- Impact strategy and program design: Clear articulation of what the initiative does, for whom, through what mechanisms, and why and how it will create impact.
- Client-level advisory and technical assistance: Tailored support to institutions, platforms, financial service providers, and implementing partners to strengthen inclusive products, services, operating models, and delivery approaches.
- Ecosystem and market analysis: Landscaping of key organizations, stakeholders, user groups, constraints, and opportunities to inform program, product, and service design.
- Inclusive product and service model advisory: Support to design, test, or refine models that better serve underserved communities, such as micro- and small enterprises, workers, entrepreneurs, and digitally excluded groups.
- Theory of change development: Co-created with partners, grounded in evidence, and realistic about the causal pathway from activity to outcome.
- Governance frameworks: Embedded decision-making structures, accountability mechanisms, and partnership arrangements that are fit for purpose.
- Eligibility and selection criteria: Designed to reach the right innovators, ventures, organizations, or end users to achieve the initiative’s stated ambitions.
- Partnership and co-funding models: Structures for engaging co-funders, delivery partners, ecosystem actors, technical advisers, and implementation partners across the program life cycle.
- Operating model design: Staffing, systems, workflows, and delivery processes that make the initiative feasible within the constraints of budget, timeline, and context.
*Not all will be relevant for each project
