GT started supporting microcredit initiatives since 1989 when the poverty fighting capacity of microcredit was not well recognized and when Microcredit Programs (MCPs) had no access to financial institutions. Given the success of Grameen Bank in reaching the poor, providing them with financial services, developing sustainable MCPs and helping them overcome poverty in this process, a lot of people and organizations committed to poverty alleviation became interested in Grameen replication. In response to this, GT came forward with its program of financial assistance in the form of seed and scaling up funds, which are made available to Grameen Bank Replication Partners (GBRPs) as soft loans if they satisfy the selection criteria. As of December 2009, GT approved USD 7,559,932, Rs. 178,259,177 and BDT 42,743,652 and disbursed USD 7,490,032, Rs. 115,299,177 and BDT 40,999,521 to its partner organizations.

 

In 2009, GT disbursed USD 6,936 to Hasnabad branch of SARS in India and USD 30,000 (out of approved USD 50,000) to Aceh branch of AGCP in Indonesia as scaling up fund.

In recent years, there has been a shift of policy focus of Grameen Trust from providing seed and scaling up funds to partner organizations towards serving millions of poor people around the world through direct implementation programs. It is because the direct implementation programs have proved to be cost-effective, as Grameen experts implement the projects on the ground, which significantly lowers the implementation time as well as cost of training. This has proven to be the most effective way of reaching out to many poor people within a short time period.