It employs people at the base of the pyramid or socioeconomically disadvantaged individuals as principal workers in BPO centers to provide high-quality, information-based services to domestic and international clients.
The impact sourcing sector focuses on utilizing workers from poor and vulnerable communities to perform functions with lower and moderate skill requirements such as scanning documents, data-entry work, data verification and cleaning, video tagging, and microwork.
Impact sourcing first evolved as a new sub-sector of the industry in India as rising costs in urban centers forced many outsourcing providers to focus on higher end services such as voice.
[4] In 2010, The Rockefeller Foundation launched an initiative focused on poverty reduction through employment to further its core activities related to supporting "sustainable livelihoods" among poor and vulnerable populations.
[5] Employment in impact sourcing also serves as an initial entry point into the formal economy, which leads to valuable job experience that can help workers pay their way through school, receive higher education and move towards better careers.
Impact sourcing also has the potential to benefit traditional BPO service providers, who are actively seeking alternate lower-cost destinations (i.e. smaller cities and/or rural towns) and pools of new and more affordable qualified workers.