One of the main goals of the World Economic Forum is to improve the state of the world. Improving the state of the world inevitably means improving the economic and social living standards of vulnerable and destitute segments of the population; with the help of collaborations and projects based on public–private partnership. Microfinance is unique and presents exceptional opportunities in achieving this goal.

Microfinance and impact investing – topics of interest for me for quite some time now – manage to generate financial and social returns at the same time and largely fall into the category of corporate social responsibility. The triple bottom line measures the economic, environmental and social returns of microfinance. Investors and enterprises that are committed to the triple bottom line contribute towards an environmentally friendly and sustainable economic development of poor regions of this world.

Small Money – Big Impact is comprehensive, and more importantly, informative and explanatory. Fanconi and Scheurle have successfully illustrated the nature and potential of the world of microfinance and impact investing, and displayed how social and financial interests can indeed go hand in hand and contribute towards the implementation of the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals. This book's detailed description of the loan granting processes of microfinance institutions outlines to what lengths private and public investors have gone over the last 15 years in their fight against poverty. Microloans foster financial integration and empower millions of people to progress economically. The results and the statistics are promising; however, we still have a long way to go.

This book is a standard reference that covers all the relevant information in the field of microfinance. It is an invaluable contribution towards the further development of current strategies in the fight against global poverty, and it aims to convince investors that both the financial and social returns that are generated by microfinance are attractive in equal measure.