ByFenton Whelan & Amine El Mourid | On24 September 2019
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Many organizations use ‘funds’ to catalyze change. A few tricks can boost their effectiveness.
Incentive funds are an increasingly popular intervention in a range of sectors. Funds range from incentives designed to encourage devolved governments (e.g. states) to implement policy through to innovation funds designed to develop and prove successful new practices.
Incentives can be a powerful influence on behaviour. However, many funds find that their impact is lower than expected, their funding results in unintended consequences, or the interventions they fund prove either unsustainable or unable to scale.
We looked at successful and unsuccessful funds, the challenges they faced, and the strategies that were effective in overcoming them. We found that funds generally had one of four objectives, and that the challenges they faced, and things they needed to do to be successful, varied accordingly.
The four objectives were:
Drive behavioural change at scale. Examples include the ‘Race to the Top’ fund used drive change in state education in the United States, or Peru’s Incentives Plans for municipal governments and education authorities.
Target funding at areas where it is required most: Examples include ‘School Improvement Grants’ in the United States, which are targeted at schools with the highest level of need, or number of funds in Nigeria targeted at states with the lowest levels of performance.
Generate evidence about effective practice: Examples include most ‘Innovation Funds’ which aim to generate evidence about innovations and their potential impact.
Generate awareness about issues. Examples include the Global Teacher Prize, which aims to generate awareness about teaching, or the awards for health and education sponsored by Qatar’s WISH and WISE
The first two types of fund require relatively large amounts of funding to be effective, and aim to directly influence decisions. The second two require less funding, but influence decisions indirectly.
Different types of funds face different challenges. When funds try to drive change at scale, the biggest challenges tend to be around data quality and avoiding unintended consequences and incentives. For instance, funds which reward schools based on exam scores need to address a large number of issues around data and incentives. Conversely, where funds aim to generate evidence (about new innovations) or awareness, the main challenges are in ensuring that new ideas are taken to scale.
The challenges funds face, and the strategies to overcome them, vary based on their type:
01. Drive change
Challanges
Large funding requirement
Risk of gaming and perverse incentives
Ensuring data is rigorous
Moving ‘hard-to-measure’ outcomes
Ensuring capacity to implement
Strategies
Demonstrating initial impact to gain long-term funding
Heavy investment in monitoring
Iteration in goals and monitoring to counter negative effects
Processes to share effective practice and build capacity
02. Target resources
Challanges
Negative incentives (rewarding failure)
Low beneficiary capacity
Ensuring data is rigorous
Potentially low results relative to investment
Strategies
Detailed capacity assessments and strengthening plans prior to investment
Distribution of funding in tranches based on performance
Levers for intervention in no performing grants
03. Generate evidence
Challanges
Ensuring that interventions are scalable
Generating interest and uptake of successful interventions
Ensuring sufficient high quality applications
Strategies
Building scalability into assessment criteria (e.g. realistic costs)
Including participants from a range of context similar to those in target systems
Wide publicity to generate the maximum number of applications
04. Generate awareness
Challanges
Translating increased awareness into improved implementation of policy
Ensuring the integrity of successful examples
Strategies
Rigorous due diligence of selected examples
Broad outreach and awareness efforts
Direct targeting of decision makers and involvement in the process
Successful funds correctly implemented the strategies applicable to their type. In all cases, strong routines, processes and data systems were integral to success – as always, good outcomes