Impact sourcing, also known as socially responsible outsourcing, refers to an arm of the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry. 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 traditional BPO sector is typically associated with high-end, high-contact functions like call centers, which require significant education and language literacy levels. 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. The BPO sector Business process outsourcing (BPO) refers to the outsourcing of certain business processes (i.e. informational and transaction services) to third-party service providers. This business has grown over the past two decades to a hundred billion-dollar sector that directly impacts both international trade and the global economy. Growth in the sector has been driven by five mega-trends: Global macroeconomic liberalization The digitization of business processes Technological innovations and the adoption of technology Growing worldwide capabilities Global business culture. Growth is likely to continue; Kennedy considers that the majority of these drivers are unlikely to reverse. The global estimate for the sector was as high as $574 billion by 2015. Developing countries have particularly benefited from the growth of the BPO sector, generating exports and millions of jobs. Leading centers for BPO locations include India, the Philippines, China, Costa Rica, and South Africa. Origins of impact sourcing 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. New businesses sprang up in rural areas of India where they enjoyed both lower costs and less staff turnover. Those BPOs, such as RuralShores, employed high school graduates and university students from agrarian, low-income families. Support 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. The Monitor Group and The Rockefeller Foundation, borrowing from impact investing terminology, formally coined the term "impact sourcing" in a 2011 report that focused on the beneficial job creation aspect of the BPO industry. The Global Impact Sourcing Coalition (GISC) supports employers wishing to develop more inclusive supply chains by