Frances Sinha, co-founder director of EDA Rural Systems, and director of EDA’s associate company M-CRIL.

With 25 years of experience in development based in India, Frances has led teams for impact assessment and market research with a focus on cost-effectiveness, gender issues, poverty analysis and practical reporting – throughout India, also in Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal and Tajikistan. 

She is closely involved with current initiatives around social performance in microfinance, including:  social performance management – training and research (as a member of the Imp-Act consortium); pioneering the development of a social rating methodology to complement financial rating, with the M-CRIL team; coordinating global pilots for social reporting (Ford Foundation, Social Performance Task Force) and contributing to development of social reporting indicators (on the MiX Market); and leading the EDA team in working with social investors and their MFI partners in India and Afghanistan to develop practical systems of SPM and social reporting, and introducing the Progress out of Poverty Index (PPI) with the Grameen Foundation (US).

On-going programmes and organisations that she is associated with include: the Rockefeller Foundation (to develop social reporting metrics and standards for ‘Impact Investing”), the MicroCredit Summit (Poverty Assessment Panel, India), Shorecap Exchange (Research Advisory Group for tracking employment outreach of SME lending), and AMK, Cambodia (member of the Social Performance Committee). Frances is also member of the Board of FWWB, India.