60dB’s 2023 Year in Review
Mapping our year in projects
Explore all the places where we completed impact measurement projects in 2023.
2023 by the numbers
5M
150K
598
724
29
33
Understanding how our clients are using 60dB Data
We surveyed the organizations we work with to understand how they use our data. 94% told us they are using their results in one or more of the following ways…
Sector highlights
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Financial Inclusion
We launched our second Microfinance Index this year, with comparable, customer-based social impact performance data from more than 32,000 borrowers from 114 leading financial service providers (FSPs), a full 50% of the world’s microfinance market. If you want to know who is being served by microfinance and the impact they’re experiencing—across client protection, business impact, agency, financial resilience, access, and household impact—check out what we learned by poring through more than 1 million data points from customers around the world. You’ll find new insights as well as geographic snapshots for Cambodia, India, Uganda, Ecuador, and Indonesia, the names of the top-performing FSPs in our Index, and more.
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Off-Grid Energy
Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund (AECF) Lean Data Insights
Between 2020 and 2023 we conducted lean data studies for 25 AECF portfolio companies across Africa, listening directly to more than 7,000 customers to understand how increased access to energy products and services from AECF investees has affected their quality of life. The report provides insights on usage patterns, experience, satisfaction, and impact; and assesses performance relative to peers via our Energy Benchmarks.
63% of customers we spoke to shared that their lives had been significantly improved by the product or service they use from an AECF portfolio company and, on average, the AECF portfolio companies we studied outperformed our 60dB Energy Benchmarks in five out of seven metrics; including First Access, Female Reach, and Ease of Use.
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Agriculture
Bayer’s Collaborative Initiatives: Improving Smallholder Farmers’ Livelihoods
Bayer, a global leader in agriculture, is committed to enhancing smallholder livelihoods worldwide. Bayer brought on 60 Decibels to assess and improve the impact of these programs. This partnership aims to better understand the challenges faced by agricultural communities around the world and identify opportunities for social enterprises to improve smallholder farmers’ livelihoods. We studied four Bayer programs: the Ansal Tomato Variety in Kenya, the Better Life Farming Program in India, a small-scale cattle ranch program (DKsilos) in Mexico & Honduras, and the GeoPotato Program in Bangladesh.
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Quality Jobs
Upaya Social Ventures Dignified Jobs Collaborative Report
We delivered a report to provide aggregate insights from the Dignified Jobs Collaborative – an initiative by Upaya Social Ventures which brings together impact investors in emerging markets to engage in transparent inquiry across themes of workforce development, dignity, and quality in jobs. These insights are based on 989 phone interviews with jobholders who work with the seven participating companies of the DJC in India – Essmart, Frontier Markets, Greenworms, Just Organik, Oorja, Project Hero, and ReCircle.
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Gender
CARE International Aggregate Lean Data Report
CARE International partnered with 60 Decibels and Mission Measurement – who represents the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth – to measure core business themes and capture the impact of the CARE Women’s Entrepreneurship program in Vietnam, Pakistan, and Peru. This initiative aims to reduce barriers that women entrepreneurs face by offering a combination of financial and non-financial services that are essential to creating sustainable growth and empowerment for women entrepreneurs.
This report presents aggregate results based on surveys conducted with clients in three different countries. By assessing performance across implementing countries, we can highlight variations in performance and identify opportunities for cross-pollination amongst these programs.
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Interactive sector benchmarks
Listening to the people who matter most
We believe that the best way to understand social impact is by talking to the people experiencing that impact. It sounds obvious, but this isn’t the typical practice for many impact investors, corporations and foundations working to create social change. Here are some snapshots of what customers and beneficiaries shared with us this year – all via phone calls with our global team of research assistants.
Top Volume opens
The Volume is a curation of our favourite weird & wonderful finds, with almost 13,000 fellow data geeks tuning in each month. Not yet one of them? We can change that.
Here are some of the most popular reads of 2023, based on your clicks.
> Latest millennial diagnosis: Telephonobia. Is the phone call in crisis? So asked the Evening Standard, in an article citing research that found that “75% percent of millennials dislike phone calls because they’re time-consuming, while 81 percent suffer from anxiety before they manage to make a phone call.” UrbanDictionary has dubbed this “telephonophobia” (no word yet from Merriam-Webster, but we’re hoping they come up with something pithier).
> It’s ‘literally’ ‘fine.’ This amazing Mental Floss post discusses 40 words that are their own opposites. Our personal favorites include some ones we knew—oversight, sanction, handicap—and some serious head-scratchers—help, seed, and fast. As in, “we can’t help it, we’re addicted to seeding tomatoes before eating them. We’re holding fast to our passions.” SOS!
> Clean up on aisle…New Jersey. File under: how NOT to compost. 300+ pounds of pasta were recently found dumped next to a stream in Old Bridge, New Jersey. The pun pastabilities are endless here, but the winner from Reddit is undoubtedly “send these perpetrators straight to the pennetentiary!” Honorable mention for “someone is gonna have to pay a pretty penne to clean this up” as well as “throwing away pasta? What a fusilli mistake.” *Chef’s kiss*
Client feedback
Don’t take our word for it – here are some of the lovely things our clients had to say about our work this year!