One Acre Fund believes that we must rigorously measure our client impact. But in order to measure impact, we need to understand the lives of our farmers before they join One Acre Fund.

Every May, our monitoring and evaluation department sends its agents out to the field to administer the One Acre Fund Baseline Survey. The survey consists of forty-two questions that range from “How many chickens do you have?” to “What are the 2-3 areas that you plan to spend your savings on in the future?” The answers to these questions are gathered from over one thousand first-time One Acre Fund clients and repeat clients. The data becomes part of a Baseline Survey database, intended to track the demographic and agricultural profile of One Acre Fund clients.

One of the first-time clients our agents surveyed recently was a mother of three named Helen. She lives in a mud house with a pit latrine. She owns one goat, thirteen chickens, and a cell phone. She does not have a formal bank account. Last year, she only harvested 10 bags of maize on ¾ acre of land, not enough to feed her family for the year. Before she harvests this year, she will purchase at least 1 bag (180 pounds) of maize for home consumption. Helen completed primary school, but did not go to secondary school. All three of her children are currently in school.

Gathering data from thousands of farmers like Helen allows One Acre Fund to measure its client impact, but it also adds to the cost of our field operations. Days gathering baseline data are long. Agents begin their day by traveling to village areas, where One Acre Fund field staff help direct them (usually via cell phones) to specific farmer homesteads. There can be plenty of legwork in between interviews—from office to fields, between fields, and between communities. Agents will find themselves motorbikes, bicycles, and matatus (passenger vans) to get from farmer to farmer.

In preparation for executing the surveys, agents practice techniques for efficiently asking questions, and ensuring data integrity. Agents are clued into how to avoid biasing answers (ie, not asking leading farmers to specific answers), and how to recognize honest responses. On average, an agent is able to complete one survey in twelve minutes. This season, more than one thousand surveys were completed over a six-week period, and agents aim to complete five hundred more before the upcoming harvest season.

This season, One Acre Fund’s monitoring and evaluation team integrated new questions into the baseline survey. Embedded within the survey are eleven questions that, once complied, will allow One Acre Fund to measure poverty level using a popular microfinance industry tool called the Progress Out of Poverty Index (PPI). Using this tool helps us measure our income impact, but it also allows us to provide data that can be compared with other financial services institutions.

But our survey allows us to collect a much richer level of data than the PPI. We are collecting information on rates of livestock ownership, access to arable land, and expenditure on agricultural inputs, among other household economic information. Knowing clients’ assets, hunger experience, home expenditures, and income-generating activities will help One Acre Fund continue to offer products and services that provide maximum impact to our farmers. Though measuring our impact with this level of rigor is costly, we believe it is a worthwhile investment in the long-term future of our organization.