No, your money represents a true donation. Any capital returned to Fandema feeds into our operations budget for the following year, including employee compensation, infrastructure costs, and new pilot funding.

If a farmer’s project completely fails, the funding acts exactly like a grant - there’s no obligation to repay and the individual is no worse off. However, most projects will be moderately successful. In those cases, we encourage farmers to return as much as they can after accounting for expenses they may have had. This allows them to remain part of our network and funding pipeline.

We recruit farmers in a few different ways. The first is through in-network referrals where we ask our successful farmers to nominate 1+ new farmers who they think will also succeed. The nominating farmer then becomes a direct mentor of the new farmer, helping them monitor and report on their projects. The second method is through external network referrals, including from extension workers like government staff or Peace Corps Volunteers.

Regardless of the recruitment method, the candidate is then interviewed with a focus on activities they already do, even informally. If they have built a habit doing something from one of our project categories, then we believe they will be more successful when given funding.

Not currently. We are still in the process of becoming a registered 501(c)(3), although we expect to receive that status within the next year.

As much as you like! If we don’t have a project ready to accept the full donation, we will hold the funds until another project is available. We only ask that you give at least $5 per donation to make it easier for us to assign it to a farmer.

While you cannot directly select an individual farmer due to IRS regulations, you can send us a message advising us on which project categories you would want to fund.