Tulay Sa Pag-Unlad, Inc. (TSPI) is a case of a microfinance nongovernmental organization trying to hold its organizational culture together while forces it has set in motion are beginning to have the opposite, centrifugal tendency. Yet there is more to this story than the commonly observed attempt to expand too rapidly and ambitiously. This "snapshot" taken in later 1995 shows an institution with an increasingly diffuse mission, and it has real consequences for TSPIs overall effectiveness. TSPI's capacity to stop and analyze its impact, test its assumptions about its various markets it was entering and intended to enter, had become diminished. As its newer programs passed out of start-up stage, problems began appearing rapidly. And even though the organizations covered its costs in 1993-94 (barely), it had not met the sustainability test. Finally, given the high rate of portfolio expansion in the few preceding years, its summary numbers - a total of only 3359 active borrowers - suggest an interesting lesson: best practices cannot make up for lack of strategic coherence.
