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.