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Metrics Matter: How USAID Counts "Local" will Have a Big Impact on Funding for Local Partners

In November 2021, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Samantha Power set out her vision to make aid more accessible, equitable, and responsive, including a key metric that 25% of USAID’s funding will go to local partners by 2025. Publish What You Fund (PWYF), with support from Oxfam and others, has undertaken detailed research into the 25% local partner funding goal to establish an independent, credible, and replicable baseline to measure and track funding for local partners. Using a sample of ten countries where USAID works, PWYF calculated the current proportion of USAID funds received by local organizations. PWYF compared two separate approaches – USAID’s announced measurement approach that looks at a narrow set of funding and uses simple criteria to identify local organizations, and PWYF’s own approach that includes more project funding and uses detailed criteria to identify local organizations.

This report was originally published by PWYF here.

Author

Alex Tilley

Publisher

Publish What You Fund, Oxfam, CARE, Catholic Relief Services, FHI 360, Global Communities, Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network, NKO Strategies, Save the Children

Publication date

Publication type

Research