Donor requests for economic analysis of humanitarian field programmes

ABSTRACT

Humanitarian organisations respond to increasing donor requests to assess economic aspects of their programmes, including cost-effectiveness. This article presents results from a survey of humanitarian agency staff and donor agencies, investigating such requests. Findings indicate a need for clear guidelines and capacity building in these economic assessments, expressed by both humanitarian staff and donor agencies themselves. While improving efficiency is important to ensure effective humanitarian response, caution is warranted in adopting overly burdensome and complex assessments of efficiency which are poorly understood by staff requesting and responding to them, the outcomes of which may lead to reductive and decontextualised decision-making.

KEYWORDS:

• Aid
• Aid effectiveness

Acknowledgements

We appreciate all the ACF country office staff and the representatives of donor agencies who took the time to candidly discuss with us. We would like to thank the following individuals who provided input on a previous version of this manuscript: Chiara Altare, Jose Luis Álvarez Moran, Serge Breysse, Saul Guerrero, Silke Pietzsch, Shashwat Saraf, Victoria Sauveplane, Vincent Taillandier, and Tracy Whitehead.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Note on contributors

Chloe Puett is a Senior Research Advisor at Action Against Hunger USA, New York, USA.

Cécile Salpéteur is a Nutrition Research Projects Coordinator at Action Contre La Faim (ACF-France), Paris, France.

ORCID

Chloe Puett http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5163-5933