Impact First Initiative
By harnessing the potential of innovative financing methods, Village Enterprise is ensuring that entrepreneurship-driven economic inclusion programs remain impactful and cost-effective as they’re scaled across Africa.
Despite being the first Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) by the United Nations, ending extreme poverty at the global level is woefully offtrack. Not only is there a growing SDG financing gap estimated at $4.2 trillion USD per year—a 70% increase compared to pre-Covid—but evidence shows that 80% of SDG targets are struggling to make progress. And despite making great strides to develop data-backed solutions, such as poverty graduation programs and cash transfers, the current aid landscape and economic growth alone won’t be enough to sufficiently end extreme poverty by 2035. To ensure we meet this global target, it’s crucial development organizations re-evaluate their current strategies, focusing instead on approaches that prioritize impact and steward existing resources more effectively.
That’s why we created the Impact First Initiative.
The solution is clear—funding for economic inclusion programs is awarded when objectives are met and results are achieved. While this seems like an obvious solution, it flips the traditional funding model on its head: historically, grants are awarded to organizations based on their plan to provide inputs and activities to solve the problem at hand. Unfortunately, this means an organization could implement their program and still receive funding regardless of how well they actually achieved results. In fact, the USAID Office of the Inspector General reported in 2019 that over 40% of USAID awards were achieving, on average, just half of expected results, yet service providers were still generally paid full award amounts.
The innovation is simple—instead of mandating an adherence to inputs and activities, funding is tied to verified outcomes. This creates an environment that values flexibility and nurtures innovation in order to achieve results, and demands accountability to meet project goals. Village Enterprise’s Impact First Initiative embodies a strategic commitment to not only scale our program across sub-Saharan Africa, but scale it well. As we collaborate with governments, donors, and other stakeholders to massively scale graduation programming, we refuse to accept mere extension of reach. Our priority is to ensure that every dollar spent and every person reached translates into tangible, sustained impact.
What We Offer
Through Village Enterprise’s Impact First Initiative, we provide a comprehensive suite of services to empower funders, service providers, and partners to design and implement results-based projects that effectively tackle poverty in Africa. Our support includes:
- Training on Outcomes-Based Financing: We provide expert training on the fundamentals of outcomes-based financing for livelihoods, equipping stakeholders with the knowledge to drive successful results-based projects.
- Policy Advocacy: We engage with policymakers and decision-makers to advocate for the increased adoption of results-based aid, influencing the broader funding landscape.
- Technical Assistance: We offer technical support to host governments and funders, guiding them in commissioning services based on measurable outcomes and ensuring a strong foundation for results-driven programming.
- Capacity Building for Service Providers: We facilitate the entry of new service providers into the results-based space through proposal development support and tailored capacity building, ensuring they have the tools and expertise needed for effective implementation.
- Raising and Managing Integrated Impact Investments: We raise integrated impact investments and, where desired, manage those investments on behalf of stakeholders, aligning funding with measurable outcomes to drive greater impact.
By working together, we can drive sustainable change and create lasting pathways out of poverty for vulnerable communities in Africa.
Join us in this mission—your support can make a difference.
Give today to help us create a future where every dollar makes a measurable impact.
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Featured Impact First Initiative workstreams
First development impact bond for poverty alleviation
The Village Enterprise Development Impact Bond (DIB), conducted from 2018-2020, was the first impact bond directly addressing poverty alleviation. Key stakeholders included outcomes payers (FCDO, USAID, and a private funder), a service provider (Village Enterprise), a trustee (GDI), investors (nine, led by Delta Fund), an outcomes evaluator (IDinsight), and a project manager (Instiglio). The DIB showcased a scalable funding model, focusing donor funding on effective programs while incentivizing delivery efficiency and impact growth. Results surpassed targets, benefiting 95,000 East Africans-70,000 of whom were women and children—mitigating COVID-19’s economic effects. Evaluation revealed sustained increases in household spending and net wealth, projecting a lifetime income boost of over $21 million, 5x the implementation cost. Learn more about the Village Enterprise DIB.
Scaling sustainable poverty graduation in Rwanda
We secured a new extremely strategic $6.5M results-based funding award from USAID Development Innovation Ventures and $1.3M from AFD Fund for Innovation in Development. This results-based award supplemented with co-financing from AFD Fund for Innovation in Development will enable Village Enterprise to deepen its work with governments and collaborate with the Government of Rwanda. By training Rwandan government staff to implement our graduation model independently, this project will work towards ending extreme poverty on a national scale. This first phase focuses on expanding the Village Enterprise implementation footprint from one to four districts to directly serve 23,000+ households, training government staff, government implementing a pilot program for 8,100 participants, and establishing a robust national management information system. This results-based grant ties payment to meeting predefined milestones and results, using the USAID fixed amount award. It does not require third party working capital, as selection of some proximate milestones alleviates this need.
The next phase is geared towards rapidly scaling, targeting an additional 700,000+ households and transforming more than 4.6 million lives to end extreme poverty in Rwanda by 2030. As we partner with the Government of Rwanda to scale poverty graduation efforts and end extreme poverty in the country, we are simultaneously working to establish a scalable outcomes fund to streamline civic collective action and mobilize new funding. This outcomes fund will ensure that funds accessed by civil society implementers are tied to measurable results that align with government defined poverty alleviation priorities. While the government will leverage the technical assistance provided by Village Enterprise to fund and implement portions of the graduation program, Village Enterprise will also provide training to NGOs and local community based organizations to implement effective poverty graduation programming. Learn more about our work to scale poverty graduation in Rwanda.
Pioneering a new market for social outcomes: $9.9M in verified impact assets and counting
Village Enterprise has partnered with Common Good Marketplace (CGM) to market and sell social impact generated through implementation of the evidence-backed Village Enterprise graduation model. CGM’s emerging social outcomes marketplace is a global impact marketplace that exists to advance the SDGs and human flourishing by measuring, valuing, independently verifying and delivering social and environmental impact. The outcomes generated by Village Enterprise have been validated and marketed as Verified Impact Assets (VIAs). To date, we have issued $9.9M of VIAs across Kenya and Rwanda, independently verified by CGM and impact auditing firm Moonshot Global. Outcomes Accelerator has funded our final steps in bringing our impact assets to market, and we are now actively seeking buyers to purchase our VIAs and validate this emerging market. A successful proof of concept will lay the groundwork for tapping into new pools of capital and engaging a broader range of stakeholders in the pursuit of sustainable development.
→ Purchase our Kenya VIAs | Purchase our Rwanda VIAs
How this works — and why it matters for our donors
The impact underlying our VIAs was created through Village Enterprise’s core programme delivery, funded by the unrestricted general operating support of our incredible donor community. This is intentional and something we are proud of: rather than treating donor contributions as a one-time input, we are leveraging them to seed an entirely new revenue stream — general operating donations generate independently verified impact that is brought to market to fund future scale. Our donors are the pioneers who made this possible, and we are committed to full transparency about this model. Learn more in our FAQ. We welcome any questions from our donor community.
An outcomes model to advance refugee employment
Together with Refugee Investment Network (RIN) and Global Development Incubator (GDI), with support from the World Bank, we recently completed a feasibility study and design of a blended finance outcomes-based funding model for advancing refugee economic inclusion in the Horn of Africa. This region faces a multi-fold crisis, as the number of expected forcibly displaced persons in the region is rising, as is the expected duration of refugee’s stay in host countries, yet funding for humanitarian operations is falling globally. A blended-finance outcomes model would help alleviate budgetary constraints by accessing critical upfront private capital, while increasing effectiveness of public spending in supporting refugee economic inclusion by incentivizing results.
Fostering inclusive implementation
What if it was possible to bring local organizations to the center of creating change to end extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa? Organizations closest to the problems in their communities are best positioned to deliver impact. But they lack the funding and resources. Village Enterprise is partnering with a collective to advance learning on the potential for outcomes-based approaches to support localization.
A holistic approach to champion systemic change
Together with partners across the ecosystem, we are spearheading collective action to drive systemic change and accelerate social progress. Through avenues such as conferences, webinars, peer conversations, media coverage and publications, we are exchanging ideas and garnering support. Collaborating with organizations like UnlockAid, we aim to influence policies and secure more impact-first financing for our sector. Recognizing education as a cornerstone to success, we are committed to supporting the innovative financing learning journey of our partner institutions. Additionally, we are forging partnerships with esteemed research and academic institutions such as IDinsight and Stanford University, alongside technology firms like AtlasAI, and thought partners such as Delta Fund, to improve the efficiency of outcomes contracting. Together we are pioneering streamlined approaches to outcomes evaluation and management, to drive greater efficiency in outcomes contracting endeavors.
