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Measuring Our Impact

By measuring our impact, we unlock critical data that drives real decision making about where and how we deploy limited resources.

Impact measurement and management is at the heart of Root Capital’s work to transform rural communities. We have a responsibility to ensure our work improves peoples’ livelihoods and doesn’t cause unintended harm. Impact measurement findings help us analyze our results and fine-tune our programs to better serve farming families. To contribute evidence to the broader sector, we regularly share what we’ve learned. Read our latest findings.

How We Measure Impact

Our impact measurement and management efforts focus on two areas:

Predicting Social and Environmental Impact Through Due Diligence

Measuring Actual Impact Through Rigorous Evaluations of our Work

We employ best-in-class standards from the impact investing sector and also situate our metrics within the broader global development agenda. We employ rigorous evaluation methodologies; most recently, conducting our first set of quasi-experimental evaluations to measure our impact on farmer incomes. Learn more about this study.

We balance our commitment to rigor with usability—measuring impact in ways that are relevant to our work, budget-conscious, and suitable for remote, rural contexts. This ensures that the results are useful both to us and to our clients. In all cases, we make sure that the community directly benefits from our studies, through an approach we call "client-centric evaluation." As we measure impact, we also generate information that is useful to farmers and enterprises and deliver that data back to them.

Reports and Impact Studies

Root Capital’s COVID-19 Response: Six Month Report

In this report, we summarize Root Capital's activities from March to August 2020 related to COVID-19 response. With our community's support, we have built immediate and long-term resilience for agricultural businesses and rural communities around the world.

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Impacts of COVID-19 on Agricultural Businesses in Africa, Latin America, and Indonesia: Summary of Second Survey Results and Root Capital’s Response

In this report, we summarize the results of our second COVID-19 client survey and detail the ongoing activities of Root Capital’s COVID-19 response.

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Impacts of COVID-19 on Agricultural Businesses in Africa, Latin America, and Indonesia: Summary of Survey Results and Root Capital’s Response

In this report, we present a high-level summary of the survey results, as well as an update on activities implemented and/or planned as part of Root Capital’s ongoing COVID-19 response.

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Evaluating How Root Capital’s Client Businesses Impact Smallholder Livelihoods: Cocoa Cooperatives in Peru

This study assesses the impact of Root Capital-financed businesses in the Peruvian cocoa sector on farmer livelihoods and gender inclusion using a retrospective comparison group matching technique.

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Women in Agriculture Initiative: 2019 Annual Report

At Root Capital, we believe that agricultural enterprises are one of the most effective platforms for delivering services and opportunities to rural women. This report highlights our impact in 2019, during which we reached a record number of women farmers, increased the proportion of women in our training workshops, and helped rural businesses strengthen gender equity.

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Women in Agriculture Initiative: 2018 Annual Report

Root Capital supports the advancement of rural women, whether they work on the farm or in the boardroom. This report highlights our impact in 2018, during which we reached 246,000 rural women—an all-time high—and expanded our gender-inclusive programming to address new and diverse challenges faced by women farmers, managers, and employees.

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