development agencies created by a sovereign state with an international scope and presence responsible for administering civilian foreign aid such as UK Department of International Development (DFID), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), Austrian Development Agency (ADA), and the Japan International Corporation Agency (JICA).<sup>4</sup> The inventory includes information about programs sponsored by seven of the biggest multilateral donors (World Bank, UNDP, ADB, IDB, AfDB, UN, and EU), and by the bilateral development agencies with the largest ODA portfolios, including USAID (USA), JICA (Japan), SADC (Switzerland), Sida (Sweden), DFAT (Australia), ADA (Austria) and DFIF (UK).

Data collection ensured proper program representation across regions using the World Bank’s geographical coding to specify regions: Africa, East Asia and the Pacific, Europe and Central Asia (ECA), Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), South Asia, and North America (USA and Canada). Programs supported collectively or in partnership with various multilateral or bilateral donors were also taken into consideration.

First of all, a data collection template was designed to collect information for the database in a systematic manner. The inventory's template collected the following information:

- Type of intervention. This described whether the program consisted of technical assistance (TA), grant subsidies, access to finance, or web-based platforms.

- Program objectives and approach. This described the program's development objective and the methodological approach for its design and implementation.

- Geographical area of intervention.

- Type of financing. This described whether the finance assistance was in the form of a grant or a loan.

- Target population. This variable included different target groups by demographic condition (youth, women), by level of education (university graduates, technicians, and low skilled workers), and by socio-economic conditions (such as poor individuals, physically disabled, ethnic minorities, and former prisoners).

- Legal structure of beneficiary social enterprises. This item described the legal status (either NGOs, cooperatives, or microenterprises) that social enterprises needed to have to be eligible for a program.

- Direct or indirect beneficiaries. Direct beneficiaries are the different social businesses or organizations receiving support. Indirect beneficiaries are the individuals who would benefit from the program implementations (workers, clients, communities, etc.).

- Sectors of intervention. Sectors included education, health, agriculture, water, energy, sanitation, financial services, information technology (IT), financial services, and housing.

- Information on program budget (in US$ per enterprise per year) and program duration (in months) is also collected.

- Geographical target. This has to do with whether a program has an urban or a rural focus.

The majority of the variables (such as sector, target population, and type of financing) were not mutually exclusive, as many programs included more than one type of service, financing, etc. After the template was tested and adjusted (some adjustments were made after collecting

> 4 International organizations that are primarily private foundations were not included in the inventory. Many private foundations support the social enterprise agenda and most of their funding comes from private sector contributions. By contrast, the scope of this study is limited to government’s support of this global agenda, whereby resources that are allocated come directly or indirectly from Official Development Assistance (ODA).

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