Mifos Community

About the Client

The Grameen Foundation, which works to replicate the success of the Grameen Bank's microfinance approach on a global scale, is the driver of the Mifos Initiative to deliver an open source information management system for the microfinance industry. The Mifos software platform is a management information system that provides the key functionality required by microfinance institutions (MFIs) globally while enabling them to scale and share technology. This initiative is positioned to turn a key challenge in the growth of microfinance – that is, the limited access to affordable, flexible and scalable information technology that microfinance practitioners can adapt as their needs evolve – into an amazing opportunity for collaboration in lifting people out of poverty worldwide.

Client Need

The Grameen Foundation's rapid growth had led to the need for more efficient communication, effective tools for building community, and increased sharing of knowledge in the international community involved in the Mifos Initiative. The organization had a series of sites targeted at the different stakeholder groups, but none of them had an attractive interface or provided a global vision, and they were not linked together effectively.

Solution

ifPeople created a central Web site for the Mifos community that would serve the needs of its main stakeholders: developers, MFIs, and consultants. The site leverages a collaborative platform, along with a custom ifPeople product to provided interactive directories, with an attractive design. The new site has proved an effective means of communication, more than doubling its brisk rate of traffic on the site within a month of launching, helping to sign up more volunteers and grow the community. Visit the site at Mifos.org

Site features

• A dynamic new design.
• Success stories to highlight deployments and featured groups in the community.
• A knowledge management area that leverages community content contributions to reduce staff time spent answering questions.
• A custom signup process to manage permissions on the site based on the type of user.
• A searchable directory of users and service providers that integrates with Google Maps
• Integration with other applications for development and project management.