Research
The Research and Policy team at AOF supports the organization’s mission to advance economic mobility for underserved small business owners by conducting novel research on small business topics affecting underserved small businesses and their communities as well as advocating for policies that prioritize entrepreneurship, support low-income communities, and close our nation’s wealth gaps.
Our research spans across program evaluation which measures the effectiveness of our programming, client-facing surveys and focus groups that seek to improve our understanding of our customers’ experiences, and external collaborations with academic and research partners.
Research Reports
Ripple Effect Report, Fifth Edition
October 2026
For every $1 in taxpayer funding, Accion Opportunity Fund’s lending helped generate an estimated $112 in new GDP over the last decade. The fifth edition of the Ripple Effect report follows the journey of a dollar of public funding, which helped attract philanthropy, which in turn helped mobilize private debt, which was then lent out multiple times per decade for a total of $960 million in loans. As nearly 20,000 small businesses borrowed, hired, spent, earned and paid taxes, they generated a community ripple effect that added an estimated $5.4 billion in value to GDP.
- $1 in taxpayer funding helped generate an estimated $112 in new GDP — including roughly $61 in Earnings for small business owners, their employees, suppliers, and the broader workforce.
- $48.7 million in public funding helped produce $960 million in loans. Along the way, it drew in $139 million in philanthropy from 2,826 donors and funders, and $307 million in debt capital from 43 investors.
- More than 70,000 jobs supported — the retention of 60,000+ small business jobs and the creation of 10,000+ more.
- $960 million in loan helped generate $5.46 billion in cumulative GDP over ten years, including approximately $3 billion in Earnings.
- Methodology. The study covers four multiplier effects: catalyst, leverage, re-lending, and community ripple. The three upstream effects — catalyst, leverage, and re-lending — are derived from AOF’s own financial, donor, investor, and lending data. The community ripple effect was modeled by TXP, Inc. using the Regional Input-Output Modeling System (RIMS II) from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, covering the 46 states and Washington, D.C. where AOF originated loans between 2015 and 2025. PPP loans are excluded. Produced with research from ideas42 and made possible with support from Ripple.
Join us online Oct 30 at 10am PT / 1pm ET for a conversation about what the data shows and where we go from here. Register here
Unlocking Opportunity Together: Research on Digital Adoption and Access for Underserved Small Businesses
In partnership with Ripple, we’ve published new research on how underserved small businesses are using digital tools and what’s shaping their decisions around payments, fintech, and emerging technology.
The Unlocking Opportunity Together: Research on Digital Adoption and Access for Underserved Small Businesses report breaks down:
- What tools owners rely on most
- How business owners view AI-powered tools
- Why crypto shows up as a payments conversation, not speculation
- What barriers remain to tech adoption
The Macroeconomic Impact of Small Business Lending
The benefits of a small business loan extend far beyond the individual borrower. As a small business owner invests their loan capital in inventory, equipment, payroll, and more, the initial capital injection creates downstream impacts in the local economy in the form of new wages, new spending, and new tax revenues. This report aggregates these activities and calculates the “Ripple Effect,” or macroeconomic impact, of AOF’s lending in California, Florida, Georgia, New York, and Texas—our largest lending markets—over the past eight years from 2016-2023.
Resourceful and Resilient
In September 2020, Accion Opportunity Fund surveyed its clients to assess how small business owners adapted their businesses in response to the COVID-19 crisis.
5-year Key Entrepreneur Tracker Outcomes
Created and controlled by the Aspen Institute in 2007, is a survey to measure outcomes for micro- and small business owner clients of CDFIs and other microenterprise programs.
