1. share findings from an evaluation of ... - water institute · 11/1/2018 · water sanitation...
TRANSCRIPT
1. Share findings from an evaluation of the
WASH for Life partnership
2. Hear reflections from donors and grantees on
funding WASH innovations
3. Discuss implications for the sector
Brief introduction to USAID’s Development
Innovation Ventures (DIV)
WASH for Life partnership
WASH for Life applicants and grantees
Conclusions and food for thought
Slide from https://www.usaid.gov/div/presentation
Slide from https://www.usaid.gov/div/presentation
Slide from https://www.usaid.gov/div/presentation
Innovation can be
new technologies
or delivery models.
Promising
approaches
are scaled up,
achieving
cost-effective
and sustained
improvements
in the lives of
poor people
around the
world.
1. IN THE WASH SECTOR: Grantees pilot, test, and scale new approaches
2. GOVERNMENTS AND PRIVATE SECTOR adopt and scale proven approaches
3. INSIDE USAID: Bureaus and missions support promising new approaches
Venture capital approach: low success rate
Limited reach at outset
Small grants (~$100K) to pilot new risky ideas and identify the most promising solutions.
Public sector pathway to scale: demonstrate impact
Private sector pathway to scale: move toward cost-recovery
Mid-size grants (<$1M) to test promising approaches.
Aim to reach millions of people
Public sector: institutionalized in government budgets
Private sector: profitable with growing market
Large grants (>$1M)to scale proven Interventions.
… according to the WASH for Life stakeholders we interviewed.
Application tracker (n=792)
Applicant name
Project title
Application round (year)
Stage and funding amount requested
Applicant country and proposed project country
46 interviews with key stakeholders
DIV staff
Other USAID staff
Gates WSH team
Grantees
Non-awarded applicants
Other innovation funders
WASH sector experts
Grantee documents: proposals, reviewer
comments, progress and final reports,
correspondence between DIV and grantees
Partnership documents: shared goals
statement, progress reports, investment
memo
>200 responses, including 14 of 25 awarded grants
Characteristics of the proposed project
Funding history for the idea
Appeal of WASH for Life
Applicants’ perceptions of DIV / WASH for Life
Quality of communication and feedback from DIV
Application tracker (n=792)
Applicant name
Project title
Application round (year)
Stage and funding amount requested
Applicant country and proposed project country
46 interviews with key stakeholders
DIV staff
Other USAID staff
Gates WSH team
Grantees
Non-awarded applicants
Other innovation funders
WASH sector experts
Grantee documents: proposals, reviewer
comments, progress and final reports,
correspondence between DIV and grantees
Partnership documents: shared goals
statement, progress reports, investment
memo
>200 responses, including 14 of 25 awarded grants
Characteristics of the proposed project
Funding history for the idea
Appeal of WASH for Life
Applicants’ perceptions of DIV / WASH for Life
Quality of communication and feedback from DIV A huge to everyone who
participated in our data collection
Grants / applications:
Mean award:
Water
Sanitation Hygiene
Source: DIV application tracker and grants database
N=697
Gold shading denotes priority countries.
Source: DIV application tracker and
grants database
N=772
“The concept of DIV is great, I love it. Some of the projects
worked. (Still), there’s something off that I can’t quite put my
finger on. It’s a lot of expats working in developing countries,
and not a lot of local groups driving this forward.”
—WASH sector expert
APPLICANTS GRANTEES
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
Water Sanitation Hygiene $-
$2
$4
$6
$8
$10
$12
Water Sanitation Hygiene
Mill
ions o
f $
Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 1
Stage 2
UV disinfection water kiosks
Solar bag water filters
Rent-to-own filters
Locally-manufactured ceramic water filters
Chlorine tablets and handwashing kits for families of hospitalized
cholera patients
Point-of-collection chlorine dispensers
App for monitoring water sites
Smart pressure management system
Mobile app to reduce cost of piped water
Top: Water from 1001fontaines’ clean water kiosk
Bottom: Hiraya R-Tap System
Top: Delvic Omniprocessor
Bottom: Sanergy Fresh Life Toilet
Pay-for-use public toilets; waste processed into fertilizer and animal
feed (2 grants)
Rentable household toilets; waste processed into fertilizer
Waste-to-fuel plants in Kenya, Rwanda, and Senegal (3 grants)
Biogas-generating anaerobic waste digesters
Vermifiltration composting toilets
Low-cost latrines
Subsidy packages for settlements
Community-led sanitation mapping
Improved earthen flooring
Awarded but not executed by
grantees (not implemented)
Foam and “superwater” alternatives to soap and water
Household handwashing device in Vietnam (2 grants)
Human-centered design handwashing system in Kenya
Chlorine tablets and handwashing kits for families of hospitalized
cholera patients (counted as a water grant for analysis)
Improved earthen flooring (counted as a sanitation grant for analysis)
Top: WaterSHED Happy Tap
Bottom: IPA human-centered design process
Foam and “superwater” alternatives to soap and water
Household handwashing device in Vietnam (2 grants)
Human-centered design handwashing system in Kenya
Chlorine tablets and handwashing kits for families of hospitalized
cholera patients (counted as a water grant for analysis)
Improved earthen flooring (counted as a sanitation grant for analysis)
Top: WaterSHED Happy Tap
Bottom: IPA human-centered design process
WASH for Life applicants were typically small- to medium-
sized not-for-profit organizations founded in the last 20
years, with 5-20 staff and annual budgets under $500,000.
For nearly half of the applicants, their WASH for Life
proposal was one of their organization’s first in WASH.
Proof of concept failed (n=4)
Pathway to scale failed (n=2)
Problems typical of start-ups (n=1)
2018 grantees (n=5)
Earlier grantees (n=4)
Stalled after grant ended (n=2)
Stage 1s graduated to stage 2 (n=2)
Sanergy stage 2, Povu Poa
Many look promising. Did DIV selection improve or is it too
soon to see weaknesses?
Should these be revitalized? If so, how?
Exactly what a venture capitalist would expect!
(Not really a disappointment, actually.)
What can we learn to improve future prospects?
“The real innovation is (in funding); making lower-stakes Stage 1 bets on new ideas,
so that you can take more risks and try new ideas.” —Other Innovation Funder
Did WASH for Life meet its goal of stimulating innovation?
“Absolutely. For the inception grant, especially. Without that capital,
we would have been in a lot of trouble.” —WASH for Life grantee
WASH for Life funding de-risked promising approaches
“The grant (showed) other (private) investors that we weren’t a risk.” – WASH for Life grantee
“Signaling value.. is actual value. I see organizations that made it
to the final round of DIV very differently.” —Other Innovation Funder
“DIV is one of the smartest ways to
spend development dollars in promoting
private sector activities. … [Supporting
the private sector] was a really important
niche for DIV as opposed to blanket aid.
The private sector isn’t a silver bullet, and
we need the blend of donor/public/private
funding sources. But there is definitely a
role (for donor funds) in private
companies getting off the ground.”
—WASH for Life grantee
WASH for Life awarded three grants for
randomized control trials – one already
completed and two underway
Business development grants are a
unique type of grant-making in the innovation
funding sphere – 7 such projects focused on
driving down costs, building out revenue
streams, and achieving self-sufficient scale
Several Stage 2 grantees already have
private sector financing, but still need donor
funding as they move toward sustainability
There was very little dissemination
of stage 2 results.
Dispensers reached 4.5M users during the life of grant
In 2015, Duflo and Kremer estimated 2.2M users
translated into 1,060 deaths averted and $30M in
annual net benefits
Dispensers has not found long-term, non-donor expansion
financing, despite:
Nurturing government partnerships in 3 countries
Accessing funding through the market for carbon credits
Experimenting with a rental model (user fees)
Evidence Action continues to manage >27,000 dispensers
The three year grant period was not enough
to transition to self-sufficiency, particularly for a
young organization.
Few of the innovative ideas funded by WASH for Life had much input from local stakeholders.
“What you need is the private sector or government or consumers at the table and participating. If
you don’t get everyone on the same page and analyze [problems] together, you can’t figure out
exactly what’s broken.” – WASH sector expert
Some grantees missed critical windows of opportunity due to the long application review process.
“By the time we got the award, our idea had evolved to the point of being almost unrecognizable
from what was in our proposal.” – WASH for Life grantee
Around half of unsuccessful applicants gave up on their idea.
1 2didn’t know
about other
opportunities
1 4were too
discouraged
1 5thought no one other
than DIV would
appreciate their idea
Were good ideas lost?
How can innovation funders
work together to match ideas to
appropriate funding streams?
Evidence base for impact:
Difficult to prove the health effects of sanitation
(requires large cluster-randomized trials)
Background of decades of environmental
contamination
May not yet have a good way to quantify all benefits
Feasibility:
May only be profitable at scale
Sanitation infrastructure is often a much larger
expense than water treatment or handwashing
“We were surprised where there was such pushback on us
not being profitable yet. My thinking was – if we were
profitable, would we be applying to this funding?”
– Stage 3 Sanitation Applicant
The WASH for Life portfolio generally met targets to balance the portfolio, although…
Most DIV grantees were organizations from the US despite almost as many applications from
Africa and Asia
Roughly a third of the portfolio was in Kenya, there were very few grants in India relative to
the number of proposals to work there
There were twice as many stage 2 grants as targeted, but only a single stage 3 grant
Despite some disappointments, there is still lots of potential among active grantees
Some failures are to be expected in the venture capital model
The failure of the lone stage 3 grant to become financially self-sufficient offers lessons about
the risk of working with young organizations, the importance of institutional and political
considerations, and how much time is needed to scale up effective innovations
Download the brief at https://cipre.mathematica-mpr.com/our-publications-and-findings/projects/process-evaluation-of-the-wash-for-life-partnership
Radu Ban, Senior Program Officer,
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Louis Boorstin, Managing Director,
Osprey Foundation
Elizabeth Jordan, Water and Sanitation Advisor,
USAID
Ruthie Rosenberg, Director of Citywise,
Sanergy
Leah Jean, Business Development Director,
SOIL
To what extent will the end of WASH for Life
funding leave a void in the sector?
What can be done to encourage and nurture
innovation in the WASH sector?
What WASH challenges cannot be solved by
the sort of innovations WASH for Life sought
to support, and how can we address these
challenges?
: traditional grants and sometimes equity (Bill and
Melinda Gates, Stone Family, Osprey, Vitol)
: more likely to use innovative
funding mechanisms, such as loans and equity stakes (GIF,
GSMA Innovation Fund)
fund an individual
(Ashoka, Mulongo, Echoing Green)
: upstream, open calls on very narrow and
specific topics or questions (used by many organizations)
: funds for evaluations (Urban Services
Initiative, 3IE)
: generally only for ideas generated by
employees (World Bank Development Marketplace)
Although it doesn’t fund other organizations, Evidence Action
Beta supports innovation in the transition to scale.