Fails, Exits and Impact: SVF’s 2018 Annual Report

Download the report (in case you’re in a rush)

When Mercy Corps launched the Social Venture Fund (SVF), it was an experiment — an experiment to see whether an INGO could play a role in impact investing and use its global resources to help entrepreneurs scale their ventures smarter and faster. Now, three years later, it is no longer an experiment. It is part of how Mercy Corps does business.

Here are some of the high-level numbers…

But, numbers aren’t that great without the story. These 1.5M customers include a rural Tanzanian farmer living 500 miles from the city who can easily access educational information that helps him understand how to use fertilizer to bolster his crops and his earnings. A coffee farmer upended by conflict who can roast the beans she grows, sell them directly to customers in the U.S., and multiply her income in the process. A small shop owner in the informal settlements of East Africa who can order inventory on her phone to ensure she has contraceptives, pain relievers and healthy products on the shelves, get the goods delivered on demand, and take advantage of credit terms for the first time, all without closing shop.

The companies making this possible — Arifu, Vega Coffee and Sokowatch — and their visionary founders are at the frontier of what is possible. Mercy Corps Ventures is working alongside them and the other exceptional entrepreneurs highlighted in this report on a shared quest to deliver impactful products and services to millions of people living in underserved communities.

We hope you enjoy the story of our successes, challenges and failures on this quest and the insights we’ve gathered along the way.

Spoiler alert: we hit two fund milestones this year — our first failures and our first exit.

Sincerely,

The Mercy Corps Ventures team
Scott, Amanda, Tim, Chris, Hetal, and Carol