Who we are
In emerging economies millions of people live in poverty, unable to find proper employment and forced to try to make ends meet in low-earning and insecure ‘survival’ livelihoods, because too few formal jobs exist.
Our mission is to change this.
Our purpose and people
Serving the common good of sustainable and inclusive economic development.
We know small and medium-sized businesses have the potential to grow and create good jobs. As a result, we have focused on supporting small business development organisations and initiatives since 1956.
Our strategy and approach
Our mission, rooted within the philanthropic endeavours of the Brenninkmeijer family business owners, inspired by the key tenets of Catholic Social Teaching and closely linked to the global Sustainable Development Goals, is to help individuals, families and whole communities move away from poverty through access to decent, fulfilling and paid work.
For this to happen, many more quality jobs in emerging economies are needed.
Small businesses create jobs
While business owners may have ambitious growth plans, the business climate and often lack of infrastructure in emerging economies can make it difficult for enterprises to flourish. In addition, business advice and support can be difficult to access or limited in availability.
This is why Argidius works with organisations and initiatives offering support to entrepreneurs and managers who run small and growing businesses (SGBs). SGBs are defined as commercially viable businesses with five to 250 employees that have significant potential and ambition for growth.
We have seen that when entrepreneurs and their businesses have access to the right business development support, their businesses thrive, jobs are created, local economies grow, and communities are strengthened.
Our strategy
We are determined to play our part to reach the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals and see the world transformed for the better through poverty eradication.
We align our work closely with SDG 1, to end poverty and SDG 8, to promote employment and inclusive economic growth. In the spirit of SDG 17, we work solely through partnerships.
To achieve our mission, we focus our effort in three areas.
- We cultivate business support ecosystems offering quality advice and help, in four focus countries, to give entrepreneurs somewhere to go to help them overcome the challenges of founding and growing a business.
- We help our partner organisations develop, to be able to deliver quality support at scale, locally, regionally and globally. In practice this means choosing partners who have the potential to scale up and encouraging them to test promising approaches. It also means investing to help them become effective and financially sustainable organisations.
- We are always learning and advocating about what works, and what doesn’t, in enterprise development support. We have put in place effective monitoring, evaluation and learning tools for every programme we fund, and we support sector-wide research with global reach. Most importantly, we share our lessons learned, globally, with the whole enterprise development sector and do as much as we can to participate in and add value to sector specific dialogues.
Our history
Part of a growing global movement for enterprise development and social goals.
In 1956, founders Arnold and Egidius Brenninkmeijer, created Argidius in the spirit of the success of the family business, global retailer C&A, which had grown from small beginnings in the nineteenth century to become a major employer worldwide. Argidius’ mission was to encourage entrepreneurship and work with partners that help small businesses grow and create jobs, just as C&A had, but with the goal to tackle deep-rooted poverty challenges.
Our history
After supporting several social causes throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s, Argidius’ first significant breakthrough came in the ‘80s, when its new chair, Anthony Brenninkmeijer, spotted the potential for a pioneering micro-loan scheme to support livelihoods and microbusinesses. Argidius became an early proponent of microfinance supporting the development of key innovative institutions and helping build a market and a movement for financial inclusion.
Our history
As microfinance became mainstream, Argidius redeployed its support, trialling and evaluating other forms of intervention, to find out ‘what really works?’ and, focusing on low-income countries in Central America, Eastern Europe and West Africa. This included experimenting with value chains, directly investing in social enterprises and backing early business accelerator programmes.
Our history
Since the mid-2000s, Argidius has focused on working with partners that support small and medium-sized businesses, both as agents of formal employment growth and productivity and as an important driver of emerging economies’ overall growth. Improved results monitoring and evaluation show that many thousands of jobs have been directly created as a result – with many more added in supply chains.
Our history
The new challenge is to scale up, so that many millions of new good jobs can be created. Argidius is proud to be part of a growing global movement for enterprise development and social goals, to build a prosperous world in which everyone can fulfil their potential.
Governance and leadership
While our mission is closely aligned with Porticus, we set our own strategy and funding goals. In alignment with Porticus, we also take a proactive stance on our most precious collective resource; Caring for the Earth. We are committed to achieving more and incorporating an environmental component into our strategy and approach. Currently, about one-third of all enterprises supported through our grantee business support organisations have an explicit environmental or social mission, contributing across every SDG.
Argidius Leadership
Nicholas Colloff, Executive Director
Nicholas Colloff OBE has directed the Argidius Foundation since January 2014. He is a Senior Executive with experience as a founder, a funder and a senior manager. Prior to Argidius he was Director of Strategy and Innovation at Oxfam GB and Regional Director of the global microfinance network Opportunity International in Eastern Europe.
