IDE has facilitated an annual net income increase of more than $200 million in the hands of the world’s rural poor.  This does not include the financial benefits received by the thousands of small-scale enterprises that have been integrated into pro-poor markets to provide products and services to smallholders.  Nor does it include less tangible benefits such as improved nutrition, increased school attendance, gender empowerment, reduced workloads, and increased self-reliance.

IDE's accomplishments to date demonstrate that investing in the poor by assisting them to become integral parts of expanding markets makes good business sense. Since IDE's inception, every dollar invested in the development of pro-poor markets has resulted in more than $50 of net additional income generated by smallholders.

In 1985, IDE adopted a simple foot-powered treadle pump and marketed it to poor farmers through the private sector. To date, some two million treadle pumps have been installed in Asia and Africa. Micro-irrigation technologies enable smallholders to earn an average of more than US$100 in extra net income each year.

Beginning in 1995, IDE developed low-cost, small-scale drip systems for irrigating home gardens. In Nepal and India, 50,000 of these systems have been purchased and installed with income-generating results parallel to those achieved by the treadle pump.

In 1994, IDE started a coconut processing plant in Vietnam to help the thousands of small farmers that depend on coconut sales as their primary source of income. The plant is now locally owned and managed, employing 80 people and processing over $300,000 worth of coconut each year with 60% going to export markets in Asia and the Middle East.
 
IDE has applied its expertise in rural marketing to public health education campaigns. In Vietnam, 1.8 million children and parents have been alerted to the importance of hygiene in the prevention of trachoma, a blinding eye disease. In Bangladesh, some 3.4 million people have been reached with information about arsenic contamination in well water.
 
IDE's work contributes to gender equity by reducing women's workloads, improving family nutrition, providing a source of independent income for women, creating opportunities for women to learn new skills, and reducing the necessity for family members to migrate away from the home for seasonal wage labor.

Every dollar donated by an individual, corporation, or private foundation is leveraged by a factor of 10 by institutional donors.