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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

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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Farmer and Local Trader-Led Service Delivery Models: An Analysis of Opportunities

A successful service delivery model creates value both for farmers and the service provider. This joint report analyzes 10 borrowers in Root Capital's loan portfolio, exploring the impact and economic sustainability of their farmer extension services. It also identifies opportunities for improving and scaling these services to support farmers.

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Women in Agriculture Initiative: 2017 Annual Report

Since launching the Women in Agriculture Initiative (WAI) in 2012, we've seen again and again how gender-inclusive businesses help women grow a better future—for themselves and their communities. We are pleased to share our 2017 WAI annual report, which showcases how Root Capital is impacting the lives of rural women.

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Gender Equity Grants: Evaluating Key Benefits for Businesses, Workers, and Farmers

Rural women often face gendered barriers that limit their ability to be productive, control assets and incomes, and benefit equitably from their hard work. In 2016, Root Capital began disbursing Gender Equity Grants to client agricultural businesses to implement strategies aimed at improving women’s overall quality of life and their representation in the business. In this summary, we present an assessment of these activities and the reported results.

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Women in Agriculture Initiative: 2016 Annual Report

At Root Capital, we believe fiercely that women are critical to breaking the cycle of poverty, hunger, and environmental degradation in rural areas of the developing world. That's why we're thrilled to share our 2016 Women in Agriculture Annual Report, which details the progress we’ve made over the last year through the WAI and the strategies we’ve implemented to increase economic opportunities for women around the world.

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Women in Agriculture Initiative: 2015 Annual Report

Root Capital invests in women by investing in agricultural businesses that promote gender-inclusive practices. This report presents an update on our Women in Agriculture Initiative (WAI), through which we study the roles played by women across our value chains and the barriers they face to full participation, and identify opportunities to deepen our clients’ impacts on women.

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