Where Your $25 Goes: See Every Cent of Your Donation
Apollo Agriculture raised $88 million and doesn't publish its fees. ThriveAgric raised $50 million and doesn't disclose margins. UfarmX raised $1.3 million and shows no financial breakdown.
Maputo Bridge Capital raised $0 — and publishes where every single cent of your donation goes.
The Breakdown
When you donate $25 to support a Mozambican farmer, here's exactly what happens to your money:
| Destination | Amount | % | What It Does | |-------------|--------|---|--------------| | Farmer (M-Pesa) | $17.50 | 70% | Seeds, tools, fertilizer, labor — disbursed directly to the farmer's mobile money account | | Loan Loss Reserve | $3.75 | 15% | Protects your donation against defaults — if a harvest fails, this reserve covers the loss | | MBC Operations | $2.25 | 9% | Platform operations, field agent network, technology infrastructure, satellite data costs | | M-Pesa Transaction Fee | $0.75 | 3% | Mobile money disbursement cost charged by Vodacom M-Pesa | | FX Conversion | $0.75 | 3% | USD to MZN conversion at licensed bureau rate | | TOTAL | $25.00 | 100% | |
No hidden fees. No origination fees. No early repayment penalties. No marketing budget hidden in "operations."
Why 70% to the Farmer?
Traditional charities spend 30-50% of donations on overhead — offices, staff salaries, marketing campaigns, conference travel. Some spend more on fundraising than on the cause itself.
MBC doesn't have an office. We don't run TV ads. We don't host galas. Our "office" is a laptop in Fort Worth, Texas, and a network of field agents in Mozambique who are paid per farmer onboarded — not per hour.
70% reaches the farmer because we built technology instead of bureaucracy. Satellite credit scoring replaces loan officers. M-Pesa replaces bank branches. Blockchain replaces auditors. AI replaces compliance teams. Every dollar saved on overhead is a dollar that reaches the field.
Why 15% Loan Loss Reserve?
Farming in Mozambique is risky. Cyclones, droughts, pests, and floods happen. If we promised 100% of your donation reaches the farmer with no reserve, we'd be lying — and the first default would bankrupt the program.
The 15% reserve means that if a farmer can't repay (due to drought, illness, or crop failure), the reserve covers the loss. Your donation still funded that farmer's season. The reserve ensures the program survives to fund the next one.
This is the same model used by microfinance institutions worldwide — except most of them charge 30-50% interest to cover their losses. We charge 12-15% and keep a transparent reserve.
Why 9% Operations?
MBC's 9% operations margin covers:
- Field agent network — local Mozambicans who verify farmers, capture biometric data, and confirm harvests. They're paid per farmer onboarded, not per hour.
- Satellite data costs — Sentinel-2 NDVI imagery, Open-Meteo weather data, satellite processing infrastructure
- Technology infrastructure — platform hosting, database, API costs, blockchain logging
- Compliance — Banco de Moçambique registration, US-Mozambique BIT compliance, data protection under Lei de Protecção de Dados
Apollo Agriculture's operations margin is estimated at 25-30%. We run at 9%. The difference is technology — we replaced humans with satellites.
Why 3% M-Pesa Fee?
M-Pesa charges a transaction fee for every disbursement. This is Vodacom's fee, not ours. We don't mark it up. We don't absorb it into operations. We show it separately so you know exactly what it costs.
If you don't like the 3% M-Pesa fee, talk to Vodacom. We chose M-Pesa because 25 million Mozambicans already have accounts — more than all banks combined. Reaching farmers where they are is worth the 3%.
Why 3% FX Conversion?
Your donation is in USD. Farmers need MZN. Converting currency costs money — typically 2-4% at licensed bureau rates. We use 3% as a conservative estimate and pass through the actual rate with no markup.
Some platforms hide FX costs inside "operations" to make their fee look lower. We don't. 3% is shown separately so you can verify it.
The Radical Transparency Difference
MBC is the only African agri-fintech platform that publishes its complete fee structure. Our competitors raise millions and hide behind "proprietary models" and "competitive sensitivity."
We believe that if you're asking people for money, you owe them an honest accounting of where it goes. That's not a marketing strategy — it's basic decency.
What Your $25 Actually Buys
Let's trace your $25 from your credit card to a farmer's field:
- You donate $25 via Stripe on our /donate page
- $17.50 is disbursed to the farmer's M-Pesa account in MZN (at the current exchange rate)
- The farmer uses $17.50 to buy:
- 2kg of sesame seeds ($7.90 / 500 MZN)
- Basic hand tools ($3.15 / 200 MZN)
- Small bag of fertilizer ($6.30 / 400 MZN)
- The farmer plants, tends, and harvests
- Satellite NDVI data monitors the crop throughout the season — you can see it grow from space
- At harvest, the farmer sells grain via M-Pesa and repays the loan
- The transaction is logged to our blockchain — you can verify it happened
- $3.75 stays in the loan loss reserve to protect against defaults
- $2.25 funds the agent who verified the farmer, the satellite that monitored the crop, and the platform that connected you
- $1.50 goes to M-Pesa and FX — the cost of moving money across borders
Compare to Traditional Charity
| Organization | % to the field | Overhead | Transparency | |-------------|---------------|----------|--------------| | Maputo Bridge Capital | 70% | 9% operations + 15% reserve | Full breakdown published at /fees | | Large international NGOs | 60-80% | 20-40% fundraising + admin | Annual reports only | | Small local charities | 50-70% | 30-50% | Rarely published | | Government aid programs | 40-60% | 40-60% bureaucracy | Annual summaries |
MBC's 70% direct-to-farmer rate is competitive with the best charities in the world — and we provide more transparency than any of them.
The SROI Multiplier
But the story doesn't end at $17.50 reaching the farmer. That $17.50 creates $62.50 in social value — a 2.5x Social Return on Investment (SROI).
How? The farmer's $17.50 in seeds produces a harvest worth $100+. That harvest feeds their family (nutrition), generates income (economic activity), creates surplus to sell (market participation), and funds the next season (sustainable growth). The ripple effects — improved food security, reduced poverty, increased school attendance, better health outcomes — compound over time.
So your $25 doesn't just become $17.50 for a farmer. It becomes $62.50 in measurable social value. That's not charity — that's investment with a return.
Verify It Yourself
Don't take our word for it. Check:
- Complete fee structure: /fees — every cost, every percentage, no rounding
- Full risk disclosure: /risks — what could go wrong, honestly explained
- Live investment proof: /proof — real transactions, real farmers, real data
- Blockchain records: 22 SHA-256 blocks — immutable audit trail of every loan
- Satellite verification: Sentinel-2 NDVI imagery — see the farms from space
No other platform gives you this level of transparency. Not Apollo. Not ThriveAgric. Not UfarmX. Not the NGOs. Not the government programs.
The Choice
You can donate to a charity that spends 30% on overhead and sends you a glossy annual report once a year.
Or you can donate to a platform that spends 9% on operations, shows you exactly where every cent goes, verifies every farmer via satellite, logs every transaction to the blockchain, and publishes its risks honestly.
The choice is yours. The farmers are waiting.
Donate now — and see exactly where your money goes.
Maputo Bridge Capital publishes its complete fee structure at /fees, full risk disclosure at /risks, and live investment data at /proof. 70% of every donation goes directly to the farmer via M-Pesa. 2.5x SROI. 22 blockchain blocks. Founded by Anselmo Boaventura. Based in Fort Worth, Texas.
