2017 Annual Report OneAcreFund.org i Before enrolling, we were living in poverty. “It wasn’t only poverty of the home, but it was poverty of the mind. I could only think about food, and I put all of my energy into making sure my children had something to eat. — FARMER PHELESIA NYARANGA, KENYA FRONT COVER: Gaudence Nzomukunda, Burundi ii 2017 Annual Report Purpose We serve smallholder farmers. In everything we do, we place Farmers First. We measure success in our ability to make more farmers more prosperous. We envision a future in which every farm family has the knowledge and means to achieve big harvests, support healthy families, and cultivate rich soil. Values Humble Service Hard Work Continual Growth We meet farmers in We work hard every We improve every their fields, and we day. We execute with season. We work get our shoes muddy. world-class profes- with determination to Farmers are our cus- sionalism and business meet our goals, and tomers, and we serve excellence. Farmers then stretch ourselves them with humility. deserve nothing less. by raising the bar even higher. Dreaming Big Family of Leaders Integrity We envision serving We bring together the We do what we say, millions of farm best leaders and build and our words match families. We build long-term careers. our values. for scale with every We care for team idea and solution. members like family. TABLE OF CONTENTS 2 Opening Letter 3 What We Do 4 One Acre Fund in 2017 6 Impact Deep Dive 10 The Power of Investment 16 Cultivating Career Passion 19 Meet the Team 20 Potential Buried in the Soil MALAWI 23 Acknowledgments Opening Letter Greetings from One Acre Fund! ’m happy to share with you our 2017 was a milestone year I2017 Annual Report, which de- for One Acre Fund because for tails our progress over the past year the first time ever, we directly served more than 600,000 farm- and highlights some of the work ers. This is good progress, but we we’re most excited about. know there is still a lot of work to be done. At this stage in our 2017 Governing Board Members growth, it’s more important than ever to ensure that we’re using our resources productively and creating the maximum impact for farmers. In order to do this, we’re concentrating even harder on increasing our “social return on investment” Joel Ackerman (SROI), a metric that measures farmer income against the cost it took to Chief Financial Officer DaVita Inc. achieve that impact. SROI matters because it looks at the efficiency of resources deployed, not just the total impact created. As we continue to increase our Matt Forti scale, we see huge benefits to improving our productivity, and our aspiration Managing Director is to become one of the most cost-effective solutions to poverty in Africa. One Acre Fund USA In 2017, our primary services in Africa attained an SROI of 4.7—meaning Karl Hofmann that farmers saw $4.70 of additional income for every $1 in donor funding we President & CEO invested. While this is already a strong achievement, we’re going to be doubling Population Services down in the upcoming year, with the goal of growing our SROI to over $7 International in farmer impact for every donor dollar spent. This is a bold target, but we’re James Mwangi already making great strides by rapidly scaling our most efficient operations, Executive Director particularly in Kenya, our largest and most mature operating country. We should The Dalberg Group have some exciting news to share about this progress in upcoming reports. As we move closer to serving more than 1 million farming families in 2020, Fred Ogana SROI will be a central part of our long-term strategy, helping us strengthen Managing Partner East Africa Market our foundation and shape our organization more deliberately as we grow. Our Development goals are ambitious, but we know how much is at stake. Hunger and poverty Associates Ltd remain huge problems, but by working together and dreaming big, we’ll keep endeavoring to end them both in our lifetimes. Rebecca Onie Co-founder and CEO Health Leads Farmers First, Ada Osakwe Founder & Chief Executive Agrolay Ventures ANDREW YOUN Andrew Youn Executive Director, One Acre Fund Senior Partner/ Executive Director/ Co-founder One Acre Fund 2 2017 Annual Report What We Do It’s a bitter irony that the majority of the world’s hungriest people grow food for a living. Millions of smallholder farmers don’t harvest enough to feed and support their families simply because they lack access to the basic tools, training, and financing they need. One Acre Fund is working to eliminate hunger and build pathways to prosperity by supplying a bundle of goods and services on credit, delivered to the rural villages where farmers live. Providing all of these services together generates the greatest possible impact. FERTILIZER SEED FINANCING DISTRIBUTION TRAINING MARKET FACILITATION for seed and fertilizer of farm inputs on agricultural techniques to maximize harvest profits Other Areas of Work Government Services Partnerships Impact Ventures We’re working with governments We’re building partnerships with We’re experimenting with new, across Eastern and Southern other like-minded organizations to rapidly scalable channels to reach Africa to create impact that increase support for smallholders farmers with impactful products often goes beyond the farmers worldwide. In the microfinance and services, including short-term we serve directly. In Rwanda, for industry, we’re a founding campaigns to adopt trees and instance, we’ve partnered with the member of Propagate, a coalition hybrid seed, and new technologies government to train agricultural that’s encouraging financial such as solar home systems that extension agents who are delivering service providers to offer more use pay-as-you-go technology. services across the country. and better services to farmers. PHOTO: NTUWENI LEXA MADEYA AND CHILD, MALAWI OneAcreFund.org 3 One Acre Fund in 2017 2017 was a year full of milestones, opportunities, challenges, and successes. Here are just a few of our highlights from the previous year. 6 1 4 , 8 0 0 CROSSING THE HALF MILLION MARK: One Acre Fund served 614,800 farmers. 6 9 2 5 WE’RE HIRING! DID YOU KNOW? We employed 6,925 staff. We delivered 30,700 metric tons of life-changing products to farmers. ILLUSTRATIONS BY Shaw Nielsen INCREASING IMPACT FINANCIAL SUSTAINABILITY $171 $434 69% 98% $263 Control One Acre Fund Field Sustainability Farmer Repayment 4 2017 Annual ReportFarmer Profit Farmer Profit On Supported Activities DID YOU KNOW? HEALTHY FAMILIES CHALLENGES & 60% 40% OPPORTUNITIES We’re working to improve the health 60% of One Acre Fund and nutrition of farmers and their While many farmers had to clients are women (based on training attendance) families. This includes offering contend with fall armyworms trainings on healthy diets and hygiene, in 2017, One Acre Fund quickly trialing nutrition supplements for mobilized, rolling out trainings pregnant women, and encouraging and products to combat this farmers to produce and consume more invasive pest. healthy foods including vegetables and animal proteins. The average household size per farmer is 6 1acre GOING DIGITAL MICROFINANCE ACCESS Average farm size of a One Acre Fund farmer After rolling out mobile We launched operational repayment in Kenya, we’re pilots with microfinance now running trials in Rwanda, institutions in Ethiopia Burundi, and Tanzania. and Tanzania. $ PLANTING TREES “ONE THOUSAND HILLS, 65 THREE MILLION TREES” Average loan size CAMPAIGN per farmer 3,000,000 8,600,000 seedlings distributed trees planted in 2017 across Rwanda OneAcreFund.org 5 IMPACT DEEP DIVE ONE ACRE FUND farmers saw strong increases in their incomes in 2017. Here’s a detailed look at our impact and how we’re reevaluating our measurement approach. 6 2017 Annual Report JOEL HAMENYIMANA, RWANDA Absolute Dollar Impact $171 “Annual” Impact “Asset” Impact $135 ne Acre Fund farmers experienced strong Oharvests and dollar impacts in 2017. Overall, weather patterns were much improved, as many $221 $218 regions recovered from severe droughts in 2016. $184 We also made several adjustments to our services ’16 ’17 and trainings that ultimately contributed to $140 Average $111 higher harvest outcomes, including introducing $100 $100 $82 $82 more one-on-one training sessions with farmers $72 $71 $63 $68 and encouraging them to apply One Acre Fund practices to a greater portion of their land. To determine our impact, we physically weigh and value ’16 ’17 ’16 ’17 ’16 ’17 ’16 ’17 ’16 ’17 ’16 ’17 ’17 3 randomly selected harvest samples from thousands of One Kenya Rwanda Burundi Tanzania Uganda Malawi Zambia Acre Fund farmers and subtract all input costs. We then compare this data to farmers who do not work with One Acre Percent Increase Dollar Impact Fund, controlling for differences such as education and wealth. After collecting this information, we examine our impact in 2016 67% 65% three ways. Absolute dollar impact is the dollar difference 2017 between a One Acre Fund farmer’s profit, on average, and a comparable non-enrolled farmer. We only measure profits on activities that we support. Percent gain in dollar impact measures the percentage increase in average profit, compared Whole 145% Program with non-enrolled farmers, on One Acre Fund-supported activities. And finally, farmer return on investment (ROI) is a 103% measurement of the extra profit that a One Acre Fund farmer 84% 76% 80% makes, relative to a comparison farmer, for every dollar she 71% 73% % 63% spends on our services. 55% 60 57% Here’s how 2017 fared, by each of these measurements: 39% 30% 1.