Stage 4: Facilitate
In order to strengthen the way market systems function, a M4P programme intervenes in a facilitative way. That is, it attempts to stimulate players and functions within the market system itself to work more effectively, whilst avoiding taking on any of those roles or functions itself. M4P programmes recognise that engaging and influencing a market system can be both supportive and distortive of those market systems. Continued monitoring of intended and unintended impact is, therefore, critical to avoid potentially distorting effects.
A M4P approach is fundamentally an action-oriented one. Guided by an overall intervention strategy, programme staff engage with the market system in order to change (to the benefit of the poor) the behaviours, practices, relationships and investment decisions of market systems players, and render those market systems more effective and sustainable.
The intervention approach of a M4P programme is facilitative (catalytic) in nature, stimulating the envisaged market system change without becoming a part of that market system itself. The intervention strategy will clearly define where intervention is proposed, who the programme will engage with and in what way, and the level and nature of intervention proposed. Whilst the strategy for any M4P intervention should by design be dynamic and flexible, three stages of intervention effort can be identified:
Stage 1: Piloting and assessing initial interventions
The M4P approach is inherently action-oriented, and ideally builds upon a series of pilot or investigative interventions designed to test and refine the intervention strategy. It is critical that a process of learning and refinement is built into initial activities to assess whether the observed outcomes are substantial, consistent with the capacity and incentives of players to change, and coherent with the intervention logic.
Stage 2: Defining the size and nature of the future market system
M4P programmes strive from the outset for both sustainability and scale of impact. Pilot interventions should be used to inform the programme about the potential and validity of the intervention strategy and, in particular, whether that strategy will deliver the breadth, depth and pro-poor outreach of systemic change necessary to deliver the programmes’ vision for the future market system.
Stage 3: Designing and implementing interventions to stimulate wider market systems development
The M4P approach is explicitly ambitious, striving for both sustainable and substantial impact from the outset. A M4P programme uses the experience of initial intervention to develop its intervention strategy in order to stimulate wider market systems development. M4P interventions should evolve as the market system responds to that intervention, by addressing the constraints and building the capacities and incentives required to extend and reinforce the positive market system changes achieved.
A more detailed guide to facilitating sustainable change can be found in section 3D (pp.41-57) of The Operational Guide for the Making Markets Work for the Poor (M4P) Approach.