Great news! As of September 2016, myAgro is now an official recipient of a Stage I: Proof of Concept award from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
This year-round grant competition selects innovative ideas, pilots and tests them using cutting-edge analytical methods, and scales solutions that demonstrate widespread impact and cost-effectiveness. With this $150,000, three-year grant from USAID’s Development Innovation Ventures Initiative, myAgro can now support its two-year strategy to scale up from 15,000 farmers to 30,000 farmers, including an increase in field agent capacities and transitioning to a Malian and Senegalese management core. With a successful trial run in Stage I, myAgro is well-positioned to move on to Stage II, an exponential increase in financial support from USAID.
This award represents an exciting new opportunity for myAgro — one in which we are leveraging our existing layaway and field operations frameworks to achieve greater field financial sustainability. As a result, we will be able to successfully scale to 30,000 farmers; develop a deeper understanding of consumer willingness to pay for a myAgro packet and the drivers that influence a farmer’s increased investment; and take advantage of our operational knowledge of the resources needed to support a robust vendor program to increase field agent efficiency and reduce overhead costs.
As a social enterprise, it is of fundamental importance to achieve field financial sustainability. With this support from USAID DIV, we now have the opportunity to test our scale-up initiatives and form strategic partnerships with other NGOs serving smallholder farmers throughout the world. At scale, myAgro will have an ROI of 3x per every donor dollar invested. We can’t wait to see what kind of impact this will have on improving food security and generating higher income for smallholder farmers.
More information for our USAID Development Innovation Ventures grant can be viewed here.
