About

Over the past five years, Village Enterprise’s income, expenses, and the number of businesses we launched have all grown significantly. The fiscal year 2020 was the only year that saw a decrease in the number of businesses launched from the year preceding it. This decrease from 5,021 businesses launched in FY19 to 3,810 in FY20 was caused by the start of the pandemic and the resulting country lockdowns. We had to suspend in-person field operations for four months during FY20, starting 37% fewer businesses than planned. Since then, we have responded by launching a record number of new businesses—6,749 in FY21 and 8,179 in FY22. We aim to continue that trend in FY23 by launching more than 15,000 businesses this fiscal year.

The organization exceeded its revenue budget by $16.8M, or 181%, during the fiscal year ending in June 2022. This was primarily driven by $19.8M in foundation gifts for the DREAMS project. Excluding the non-budgeted grant amount received for DREAMS of $17.5M, revenue would be $8.7M, which is $3M above FY21 revenue. This gain was driven by across-the-board increases for all funding streams, which has placed Village Enterprise in a strong diversified position. Increases in bilateral and government funding have also produced high future growth prospects related to individual projects.

Year-over-year expenses rose by 67%, or $3.1M, from FY21 to FY22, primarily as a result of increasing our total number of entrepreneurs trained by more than 30%. Village Enterprise also increased our small business grant delivered to entrepreneurs by 20% across the board. This was done with a focus on making sure our entrepreneurs are in a position to maximize their investments despite global inflation. Most importantly, we continued to invest in building a world-class African team by hiring critical staff who can support further development of the services being offered to entrepreneurs. This includes investments in our People and Culture team, Technology Solutions team, and entrepreneur-facing positions such as additional Business Mentors and Field Associates.

Overall, our financial position remains strong. The results of the past five years have allowed us to build a cash reserve that will ensure future financial sustainability, which is particularly critical during uncertain times.

As our team has tripled in size over the past five years, we have retained our culture by putting our values of ubuntu, passion, integrity, innovation, and sustainability at the forefront of all that we do.

In order to further invest in our team and culture at Village Enterprise, we hired Evelyne Mkungo, our first-ever VP of People and Culture, and promoted our Director of Talent Management, Terry Shiundu, to Senior Director of People and Culture. And as our programs and operations continue to grow and scale, so has the leadership of our team. We promoted our VP of Programs, Winnie Auma, to Chief Program Officer, and our VP of Africa Operations, Taddeo Muriuki, to Chief Policy and Government Relations Officer.

In tackling inequity in the world, it is critical to our mission and our organization’s culture that we take diversity, equity, and inclusion into consideration in serious and intentional ways. This is at the core of what we do, who we are, and the intentional strategy that we employ to end extreme poverty.

To deliver on our commitment, we have taken deliberate action to infuse these values throughout our internal culture, systems, and practices. We have taken concrete steps to strengthen our ability to recruit and retain exemplary diverse staff and leadership, particularly from the poorest areas of rural Africa where we work. And we have undertaken reviews and audits of pay, policies, practices, and procedures to ensure they are equitable, fair, and empowering. We choose to work with partners that reflect that commitment and we are actively pursuing strategies that ensure that our organization and our partners meet the highest standards of openness and accessibility.