Poverty

One Acre Fund

Research summary, last reviewed May 2026. US 501(c)(3), EIN 20-3668110; UK charity 1153193 (One Acre UK Limited). Official site.

Independent recognition: Charity Navigator 4/4 stars · CharityWatch Top-Rated · The Life You Can Save recommended · 2023 Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize

Headline outcome: 5.5 million farm families served in 2024

What does One Acre Fund do?

One Acre Fund delivers a bundled package to smallholder farmers: quality seeds and fertiliser brought to a dropoff point within walking distance of the farm, in-village training from a field officer who lives locally, finance for those inputs repaid flexibly after harvest, and support getting crops to market. Enrolled farmers report farm-income increases of 40% or more a year and yield increases of 50 to 100% versus non-enrolled neighbours.

The organisation launched in Bungoma, Kenya in February 2006 with 38 farm families, after founder Andrew Youn met two equally industrious neighbouring farmers, one thriving and one struggling, separated only by access to basic tools and inputs. It now serves 5.5 million farm families across nine countries (Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, Zambia, Ethiopia and Nigeria), with its operational headquarters in Kakamega, rural western Kenya. A second strand is agroforestry: around 250 million trees planted since 2019 through local-entrepreneur nurseries, on the way to a goal of one billion by 2030.

Why did EveryDrop choose it?

One Acre Fund passed our four-stage vetting assessment: a clearly aligned charitable purpose (the prevention and relief of poverty, with health and environmental benefits alongside), no evidence of undue private benefit, no evidence of public disbenefit, and no undue restrictions on who benefits. The programme is open to any smallholder in a covered village, and repayment rates of 96 to 98%, with flexible schedules for households hit by drought or crisis, indicate the credit model does not in practice exclude the people it exists to serve.

Independent coverage is strong: a 4/4-star Charity Navigator rating with a 94% programme expense ratio, CharityWatch Top-Rated status, a recommendation from The Life You Can Save, and the 2023 Hilton Humanitarian Prize, the world’s largest annual humanitarian award. GiveWell has not listed One Acre Fund as a top charity, but has actively funded research into its work, including a $1.3 million randomised controlled trial of the tree programme in Rwanda.

How effective is it?

One Acre Fund publishes a social return of $4.20 in new farm profits and assets created per $1 of donor investment (FY2024), generating roughly $434 million in new farm profits and assets in 2024 alone. A study in Tanzania found enrolled farmers’ maize harvests exceeded non-client peers’ by more than 400 kg per acre.

GiveWell’s published judgement on the tree programme is that its cost-effectiveness sits slightly below the bar GiveWell applies to its marginal grants, close enough that the picture could change with new evidence. The GiveWell-funded trial in Rwanda is designed to test exactly the open question: whether more trees planted translates into durably higher household income.

What are the open questions?

We publish what we are monitoring as well as what we like. First, the evidence gap GiveWell identifies: there is good trial evidence that the programme increases trees planted and yields, but not yet direct causal evidence that this raises long-term income. We will revisit when the Rwanda trial reports. Second, the structural question any input-loan model raises: could farmers be pushed into debt distress? The empirical picture to date is reassuring (very high voluntary repayment, a published hardship and flexible-repayment policy, and no third-party investigative reporting of farmer debt distress that we could locate), but we treat it as a live monitoring item, not a settled one. Third, a 2019 essay in the Kenyan publication The Elephant raised a political-economy critique of the model’s market power in the input sector; it reported broadly positive farmer outcomes and alleged no misconduct, but we keep it on our watch-list. Finally, the organisation completed an 18-year founder-CEO transition in March 2024; the new CEO is co-founder Eric Pohlman, who built the Rwanda programme, and we will review the first post-transition filings.

Sources

This summary is derived from EveryDrop's internal vetting dossier, prepared under our four-stage assessment framework using public, verifiable sources. Assessments are re-checked every twelve months. If you spot something we should know, email [email protected].