A few years ago, agricultural economist Dr. Peter Kelly set out to improve how the world funds research benefitting smallholder farmers. Flash forward to today, and this endeavor called Grow Further is moving full steam ahead.
What has the journey been like so far? “Overall, about as expected,” Peter told us in a recent Q&A session.
It’s a humble answer from someone who’s accomplished so much.
From an idea conceived in his college years, Peter’s vision now boasts a strong and rising pool of members supporting the work of our core management team, a team that’s since expanded to more than a dozen talented individuals all backed by ten advisors.
Grow Further has received hundreds of brilliant ideas for smallholder farming research and development innovation from teams throughout the world. We’re now sponsoring two innovative R&D projects and will announce our next round of grant recipients soon. “Sourcing good proposals has been much easier than expected and we got a lot more applications in our first grant round than I anticipated,” Peter reflected. “And existing projects are going smoothly.”
As Grow Further is hitting its stride, we felt now would be a good time to reflect on lessons learned that brought us to this point.
Peter established Grow Further as a nonprofit devoted to mobilizing individual donations to support small-scale farming in developing nation contexts. By doing so, we hope to put a serious dent in the world’s food security challenges. It’s been an exciting ride so far, but Peter admits that the process of building and launching Grow Further has been a learn-as-you-go process.
“I knew that everything would take a long time since we were doing something for which no blueprint existed,” he said. “Not only was it a new concept, but there’s no degree program in how to start a nonprofit organization and it’s hard to even find a consultant who knows anything about high-growth nonprofits.”
Growing through a challenging period
Building Grow Further’s team went off largely without any hiccups, Peter argues.
He said it was easier to find our advisors than he initially expected. Locating top contractors proved a bit more challenging at first, he said, but those hurdles were overcome. The process of adding board members and volunteers occurred roughly in line with his expectations, as well. “We were building the team the right way from scratch, bringing together people who didn’t previously know each other,” he said, “as opposed to doing what most new organizations do, which is to tap into an existing organization or network that would be easier to organize in a short time but not optimal for the longer term.”
“There's still a lot of work to do, and it's going to take a long time for this concept to reach its full potential.”
Even though Peter insists that the process of building Grow Further has gone about as he initially expected, there have been unexpected surprises, including one big hit that would have derailed any similar effort—the global COVID-19 pandemic. Grow Further got lucky, he said, and the organization exited the pandemic with a strong footing.
“I didn’t see Covid-19 coming, but it came at the least inconvenient possible time in terms of organizational development,” Peter explained. “I had already done a lot of in-person networking and gotten to know other nonprofit startup founders in a coworking space, and during the pandemic built out a national and global virtual team. Things like international travel returned to normal just in time to start our programs.”
An amazing response
The foundation of Grow Further’s model is soliciting donations from all corners, but especially from individual donor members to finance R&D projects that promise to help smallholder farmers grow more food or more nutritious food.
Peter admitted that he was at first uncertain how the philanthropic community would receive Grow Further; he felt they would either “find a flaw in the concept” and turn away or embrace the Grow Further model and quickly sign up. Donors have embraced the model, but it’s taken longer than he expected, and through no fault of our own, Peter said.
“What has happened is that there has been a slow sales cycle for no particular reason having anything to do with our programming, just a lack of familiarity with the concept and the time it takes to build relationships,” he said.
We are now building a strong and diverse coalition of donor-members supporting our work.
The response from the research community has also been strong.
We received more than 700 applications for our first grants. Peter noted that as with any open application some applicants didn’t initially understand what we were looking for, something we plan to address in future rounds with grant workshops. Still, hundreds of very qualified projects landed on our desks.
The winning projects—Bambara groundnut research in Ghana and work on developing a smartphone agricultural app in Tanzania—are proceeding smoothly. “I was concerned about projects going over time or over budget or corruption, or unintended consequences and controversies like benefiting large at the expense of small farmers, but none of that has happened thus far,” Peter confirmed.
It takes time
Reflecting on Grow Further’s success to date, our founder and CEO Peter Kelly said it’s taken longer to get to this point than he originally imagined. That hasn’t created any serious difficulties, and patience is required when setting out to do something that no one has ever done before. “Everything has taken a bit longer than one might hope, but there haven’t been any significant setbacks,” Peter acknowledged.
Given a second chance, Peter said he might do a few things a bit differently based on what he’s learned so far. “I think I would have spent less time on organizational development and consensus building prior to making the first grant,” he mused, “and made an executive decision on that so that we’d have results to show a few years sooner.”
Grow Further was born out of Peter’s recognition that there are far too few ways for individuals to contribute to better long-term food security and far too many great agricultural research ideas overlooked by major foundations. There was an obvious gap in the way smallholder farmers were being supported. Grow Further is now filling that gap.
We’ve come a long way, but we have far further to go.
Peter said he’s excited to see how Grow Further changes the game. Ours is a project far greater than one individual can manage, but the sky’s the limit.
“There’s still a lot of work to do, and it’s going to take a long time for this concept to reach its full potential,” Peter said. “We’re only making 4 grants this year, out of thousands of great ideas, and haven’t even begun work outside of Anglophone Africa, though we’re planning to start in India soon and it could be big.”
Asked how he feels about this legacy he’s established, Peter brought up a quote attributed to Land Institute founder Wes Jackson: “If you are working on something you can finish in your lifetime, you’re not thinking big enough.”
— Grow Further
Photo credit: Dr. Peter Kelly (foreground) in the field in Ghana busy building Grow Further. Kwekwe Photography.
