Recognition for Impact

For nine consecutive years, Village Enterprise has been awarded four-stars on Charity Navigator. In 2023, we received a perfect 100% score from Charity Navigator—an honor achieved by less than one-tenth of one percent of all charities.

In 2021, DREAMS for Refugees—a project led by Village Enterprise in partnership with Mercy Corps—won the prestigious Larsen Lam ICONIQ Impact Award facilitated by Lever for Change.  This award recognized our innovative approach for supporting refugees to build sustainable livelihoods out of extreme poverty. Later in 2023, DREAMS for Refugees also won Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas Award for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

In 2019, Village Enterprise was honored to be one of the ten Drucker Prize finalists chosen from over 400 applicants by the Drucker Institute. According to Zach First, Drucker Institute’s Executive Director, “The 2019 finalists for The Drucker Prize demonstrate through their work the boundless innovative opportunities for organizations of all kinds.”

In 2018, Founders Pledge endorsed Village Enterprise as a top charity for women’s empowerment. From a list of 163 women’s empowerment charities, Village Enterprise was selected as one of only four endorsed by the organization. According to the Founders Pledge report, “Village Enterprise excels at improving the lives of women, and has strong 3rd party evidence that its model is an effective way of addressing extreme poverty.”

Village Enterprise is one of only 23 top nonprofits worldwide recommended by The Life You Can Save. The Life You Can Save is based on the Effective Altruism philosophy of Peter Singer, and helps donors find effective charities with high-impact interventions that provide the “most bang for your donation buck.”

In 2020, Village Enterprise was selected as a new member of the Million Lives Collective. This initiative is hosted on the Global Innovation Exchange and recognizes organizations that have touched over one million lives. We attained Vanguard member status, recognizing our transformative impact on the lives of over one million individuals previously living on $1.90 or less per day.