GIW 2017

Funders need to make decisions about how to deploy scarce resources to achieve the greatest impact. Yet, most of the time, we don't have good information about the possible benefits or costs of a program at the time of making that decision. In addition, funders are accountable for achieving results from their funding, but typical accountability cycles are often shorter than the time needed to observe impact at scale. Both funders and their partners could use continuous feedback on results to improve outcomes. During this session, the analytics team of the Global Innovation Fund, a private fund USAID helped to establish, will lead an interactive workshop presenting a lean, practical approach to forecasting, tracking, and evaluating impact. This updateable approach helps to direct limited resources to where they could plausibly have the greatest impact, uses a common measure of impact across multiple sectors and meets a demand to report on expected impact before projects have final results.