Different performance monitoring models are appropriate for different funders. JPAL's Kamilla Gumede speaks at the Tshikululu Social Investments Serious Social Investing 2013 workshop.

2. Impact Investments
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 Different definitions, agreed common goal
 Produce change in people’s lives (and/or the environment) that
wouldn’t have happened otherwise
 J P Morgan 2010 survey: 96% measure impacts
 No common metric, evaluation standards
what happened (with the programme) …and
- what would have happened (without the programme)
= IMPACT of the programme

3. Impact: What is it?
Primary Outcome
Intervention
Impact
Time

4. Why randomized evaluations?
 Standard ways of measuring impact:
 Changes over time
 How do beneficiaries compare to non beneficiaries
 But this does not distinguish impact of program from other
confounding factors
 Children learn over time (with or without a program)
 First to sign up for a program are not typical (e.g. microfinance)
 Randomized evaluation ensures beneficiaries are
nodifferent from non beneficiaries (except for the program)
 Many ways to introduce randomization that are
 Ethical
 Fit the needs of implementing agencies
 Randomization is not always appropriate or necessary

5. Measuring and Preventing Corruption
 Community Driven Development Program in Indonesia
(KDP)
 Communities that had chosen feeder roads as their project
 Villages randomized to get 100% chance of external audit
 Others got intensified community oversight
 Measure of corruption
 Dug up small (random) sample of road
 Measured how much construction material was used and
compared this to material in accounts
 Threat of 100 percent audit reduced corruption
 On average corruption fell by 8.5 percent

6. Remedial education
 Massive improvements in primary school enrollment
 Too many children are in school, but not learning
 Grade progression, with basic literacy and numeracy skills
 Remedial education can be fast, effective, relatively cheap
 Key is to provide children more time to learn at their level
 Tracking, holiday camps, some CAL can facilitate same results
 Investment opportunity for replication in South Africa
 WCED/Molteno holiday literacy camp
 50 worse performing schools in Cape Town
 30% perform at grade level

7. About us
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 Established by 3 Professors of Economics at MIT, now a
network of 70 researchers throughout the world
 Specialise in randomized evaluations to help fill
knowledge gap about what works
 334 completed or ongoing evaluations, 31 countries
 Education, health, labour, finance, governance, environment
 We also work closely with policymakers to translate
evidence into policy
 Online evidence database
 Regional office for Africa, based at UCT

8. Rethinking conventional wisdom
 Microfinance to help the poor help themselves
 Success stories largely based on cliental numbers
 Rigorous evaluation find modest benefits, only few
beneficiaries
 Menstruation cups to get girls to go to school
 Girls skip schools often, but they do so anytime of
the month
 High take-up of menstruation cups, no school effects
 Cookstoves and indoor air pollution
 WHO estimate 2 million death pa from indoor air
pollution
 High improved stove, but continued to use old one
and neglected maintenance
 No significant health benefits

9. High impact investments
 Mass in-school deworming of young children
 Reduce absenteeism by 1/6, cost 50c per child per year
 Long term gains into labour market entry
 Inform girls about HIV prevalence rates for boys
and men
 Cross-generational sexual is important driver of HIV
infections
 Reduce teen pregnancies with older men by 65%, $1 per
student.
 Smart incentives for farmers
 Sell farmers fertilisers immediately after harvest
 Strong usage of fertilisers
 Female leaders
 Reservations for women in India improved service delivery