History

1997 - Richard Beresford started SHIP (Self Help Ideas and Plans) as a personally funded project in Indonesia. SHIP helped poor families learn about micro-enterprise through self-help leaflets and small micro-grants.

During the period from 1997 to 2001 over $135,000 was disbursed to more than 4,000 families using the SHIP approach.

Aug 2001 - Richard and Toby Beresford formed SHIP as a social enterprise limited company in the UK with the objective of taking SHIP's methodology onto the Internet to "connect poor families to global resources".

Aug 2002 - MicroAid (as SHIP became known) was launched as an Internet service, providing a charitable donation broking service using online payment tools and a unique technology platform for a network of over 40 small charities in Indonesia and Bangladesh. Considerable media interest.

Aug 2003 - It became clear that the business model whereby all donations passed through MicroAid who took a small brokerage fee was going to be very difficult to make financially viable. Critically too it did not develop local community self-reliance, fund raise themselves and run projects themselves. Development of new "stand alone" version of software begun.

Aug 2004 - New launch of MicroAid Community Technology on the web: a subscription-based, software service for community based organisations (CBOs) to raise funds and manage projects, without MicroAid in the funding loop. Small charities and CBOs can now take advantage of MicroAid's software and development expertise for themselves.

Sponsoring MicroAid in your community -The MicroAid technology service is designed to be included in the monthly communications and management overhead of a small community organisation or charity.  A single subscription fee covers various IT costs including publishing micro-projects, donor presentations and contact management, newsletter distribution, micro-project development and automated email feedback, web site hosting, secure data back up and regular software upgrades . Because MicroAid is a single, predictable cost, this allows sponsors (individuals, commercial companies and donor organisations) help communities increase their capacity and self-reliance.  Subscriptions can be subsidised by sponsors either fully or in part.

Client history

MicroAid's clients are small community based charities. Since 2001 MicroAid has built relationships with a number of development partners who have guided the development of MicroAid community technology to ensure it meets customer needs.

Foundations

The findings from four key projects have been the source of much of MicroAid technical expertise for both Richard and Toby Beresford:

IFAD: Income Generation Project for Marginal Farmers and Landless (P4K)

UNDP: Planning and Implementation Support for the P4K Programme

ADB: Participatory Family Enterprise Planning (ADB SSTA 3314)

ADB: Participatory Approaches to Sustainable Income Generation - (ADB SSTA 3313)

Consulting Experience

MicroAid brings together the founders' complementary expertise into a single product: Richard's input of practical international development and microfinance tools and Toby's skills as a web services software developer are melded together to produce MicroAid Community Technology.

In the past they have worked in the following projects:

Selected projects for Richard Beresford

Indonesia - P4K – Ministry of Agriculture – UNDP - IFAD – Chief Technical Advisor on Micro-Finance programme for 50,000 micro-credit groups

Philippines – SEARCA – World Bank – Micro-Enterprise Development Advisor on Community Driven Development project in Mindanao

Indonesia – ADB - Team Leader and Participatory Planning Specialist – Rapid Rural Appraisal in village planning methodologies

Lesotho - UNOPS – Team Leader and Micro-Enterprise specialist on rural financial services assessment project

Nepal – UNOPS – Team Leader - Micro Enterprise Development Project ( MEDEP )

Selected projects for Toby Beresford

UK – Johnson & Johnson - Newchurch - NHS – Architect and Developer - Internet based telemedicine in dermatology between GPs and Consultants

UK – BAE SYSTEMS – Project Manager - Internet based human resource tools for senior management

UK/US – Ventiv PLC – Designer and Architect of a web service pharmaceutical sales team tracking software