Dear Friends,

How do you measure success?

There are the things you can count.  The number of people we’ve helped start businesses, save for the first time in their lives, and increase their families’ standard of living.  New funders added. New projects initiated. Awards won.  

And there are the things you can’t count.  You just have to listen.

“I am not an educated lady,” explained Surekha Toppo to us last October, as we sat beneath a shady tree in Jharsugauda, her rural village in India.  “But my children will go to school and they will ride a bike.  This is dignity to me.”   Other women in a nearby village spoke enthusiastically about how their Trickle Up savings groups successfully secured a community day care center, road improvements, and greater access to a local hospital:  “Now we have a voice and we use it!”  

Testimonials like these are our most vivid indicators of success.  Here are some other ways Trickle Up achieved success in 2014:

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We helped 8,185 people in five regions – an increase of more than 25% from 2013 -- start or expand businesses, learn new skills, build savings and assets, and forge powerful social bonds with one another. With about five people benefitting from each Trickle Up business, we reached more than 45,000 people.

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Survey research from more than 1,400 Trickle Up participants in India, Burkina Faso, and Guatemala added to the growing body of evidence of our effectiveness.  Research demonstrates that Trickle Up helps improve families’ food supply and quality, ability to acquire productive assets, and develop consistent savings habits.  We are especially proud of data showing how Trickle Up gives women a stronger voice in their households and communities.  For details, please see the Trickle Up 2014 Outcomes Report, a summary of our research results.

Our partnership with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees served 3,147 people in Costa Rica, Ecuador, and in Alexandria and Cairo, Egypt.  In 2015, we expect to help nearly 5,000 people through our UNHCR partnership.  We are exploring other global partnerships for similar “technical assistance” projects, with Trickle Up helping design and manage programs based on our experience reaching the poorest and most vulnerable people.

We continued two innovative projects to explore new ways to support highly vulnerable populations: at-risk children in Burkina Faso and women in India who face domestic violence.  In partnership with the Women’s Refugee Commission and the University of Chicago, the Burkina project is studying the effects of Trickle Up’s economic strengthening program on children’s welfare and the impact of adding an education component to combat hazardous child labor and forced marriages.  In India, with support from the Ford Foundation, women from 115 Trickle Up savings groups in West Bengal documented and shared one another’s experiences with gender-based violence through a participatory video project that aims to help women confront domestic abuse.   

In India, we expanded our reach beyond our traditional “ultrapoor” target by providing support to “very poor” women --those living in poverty but not at as deep a level as our traditional target group and always at risk of sliding further into the very deepest levels of poverty and vulnerability.  This approach – currently adding 1,800 “very poor” women to 600 “ultrapoor” – gives Trickle Up a greater presence in rural villages, reaching 10-15% of the families in a community.  Both groups receive similar business and savings training, with the ultrapoor also receiving Trickle Up seed capital grants.

Continuing our commitment to families affected by disability, who are highly likely to live in conditions of deep poverty, we published Disability, Poverty and Livelihoods.  We are sharing this guide with other poverty agencies and governments to help them incorporate people with disabilities into livelihood programs. In June, Trickle Up was selected to be the recipient of the InterAction 2014 Disability Inclusion Award, recognizing our longstanding commitment to people with disabilities. Trickle Up also received the Disability Inclusion Award in 2009, making us the only InterAction member to win it twice.

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The MetLife Foundation selected Trickle Up as one of its first grantees for its new $200 million, five-year commitment to promote “financial inclusion” -- helping low-income individuals and families gain access to safe and affordable financial products and services.

What does it take to accomplish all of this?  We’re proud to say that we did all this with a staff of 35 people – half in our New York headquarters and half divided among our field offices in Burkina Faso, Guatemala, and India.  We think of Trickle Up as perhaps the world’s largest venture capitalist, helping foster 8,185 businesses last year and providing capital, training and encouragement that is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for so many people.

As we enter 2015, Trickle Up is poised to make dramatic progress.  Through expanded technical assistance work, new funding partnerships, and continued innovation based on the Trickle Up model that has endured since 1979, we look forward to helping foster more than 10,000 businesses this year.  We continue to strive to strengthen our impact in every household we reach, with carefully measured results that demonstrate why Trickle Up is a sound investment in the potential of the world’s poorest and most excluded people.

Bill Abrams
President

Penelope D. Foley
Board Chair