We exist to maximise enterprises’ potential so they can deliver extraordinary impact.
A world whose biggest challenges are being tackled by enterprises creating extraordinary impact.
Many enterprises do not perform at their fullest potential and may lack the capacity to operate better, thereby limiting their impact on global challenges.
Our mission is to help deliver better solutions to global challenges by improving the performance of enterprises.
> View our Theory of Change
Challenges Group is an international enterprise development organisation that delivers enterprising solutions to global challenges. We operate globally and have offices in six countries: Ghana, Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda, the UK (Catalyst), and Zambia. The charity Challenges Worldwide is also part of our Challenges Group family.
We have had the privilege of partnering with enterprise ecosystem support organisations across 84 countries
At The Challenges Group, we are innovative and constantly learning. But our thinking is grounded in reality, shaped by over 25 years of working directly onsite with more than 5,000 enterprises around the world. That combination of curiosity and hands-on experience is what sets us apart. Our methods are tried and tested, and continuously refined through real-world application. We believe real improvement happens when you truly understand a business: how it operates, the people behind it, and the environment it works in. With that understanding, we provide tailored support, helping enterprises to perform at their best.
There are three pillars
to our approach:
To support any enterprise with what it needs, when it needs it, we have developed and delivered a suite of tools and methods to support enterprise from idea to investment. So, rather than having a single programme model, or one-to-many service offering, we have a full-service one-to-one offering – we give enterprises the bespoke support they need at whatever stage they are.
To design and deliver the correct support to any enterprise, we take a holistic approach. We assess where the intervention is most needed (the enterprise itself, its people, or its ecosystem ) depending on their present situation or future opportunity. The results are a multi-faceted enterprise improvement approach, with changes to all 3-dimensions reinforcing each other to ensure sustainable change.
For us, innovation means the practical implementation of ideas that result in enterprise improvement – not invention. We help deliver incremental gains by working with enterprises to adapt ideas and models and apply them in new contexts to maximise impact. We use enterprise experts who have lived experience supporting often hundreds of individual enterprises in emerging economies, to verify the efficacy of business models, and to use adapted design thinking approaches as a launchpad for innovations for specific problems in specific contexts.
We have been operating globally for over 25 years across four continents
Since 1999, we have provided over 200,000 onsite consulting days, delivered £30 million in debt and equity financing, and supported more
than 4,000 social businesses in 84 countries.
If you are an enterprise ecosystem support organisation, charity or funder looking to partner with us, please contact us.
