IDinsight announces three new projects supported by its Catalytic Fund

October 17, 2022 – IDinsight announces today three projects that will receive financial support through its Catalytic Fund. The Catalytic Fund was developed as part of IDinsight’s five-year strategy to catalyze high-impact partnerships that would otherwise not be funded in time to maximize impact potential. With resources allocated from the Catalytic Fund, IDinsight teams will drive high-impact, time-sensitive client engagements with trusted NGO and government partners. This round of projects include: Associates in Research and Education for Development (ARED) in Senegal, a state-level evidence unit in India, and the Philippines Department of Health (DOH). 

In 2021, IDinsight launched the Catalytic Fund and dedicated the first tranche of funding to support IDinsight’s work with Indus Action. Now, IDinsight has formalized its approach, which is driven by a steering committee of internal experts and resourced by a community of institutional and individual philanthropists. For donors, the Catalytic Fund provides a simple pathway to do the most good, with rigorous vetting embedded in our process and strong feedback loops. For IDinsight, the Catalytic Fund unlocks a new degree of financial autonomy that allows the organization to allocate resources urgently to time-sensitive, high-impact projects.

1. Associates in Research and Education for Development (ARED)

The first project supported by the Catalytic Fund is a partnership with Associates in Research and Education for Development (ARED). ARED is piloting a remedial education program that incorporates a bilingual Teaching at the Right Level approach in 30 classes – reaching a total of 600 children in three regions of Senegal. The program aims to expand to an additional 170 classes, reaching a total of 4,000 children in the upcoming academic year. To prepare for future scale-up, IDinsight is working with ARED in a Learning Partnership to assess its implementation fidelity through a process evaluation, suggest improvements ahead of scale-up, and develop monitoring, evaluation, and learning feedback loops.

2. Moving the needle on women’s empowerment through embedded evidence units in Indian state government

The second project the fund will support is an ongoing partnership to develop a state-level evidence unit in India focused on women’s empowerment. During an initial 18-month period, IDinsight worked closely and responsively with the government to develop training resources for improved nutrition data collection and utilization; build a large-scale menstrual hygiene management program; and launch a study on the declining sex ratio at birth. To ensure a bridge between external funding sources, IDinsight directed Catalytic Fund resources to this Learning Partnership to avoid interrupting a project with long-term impact potential.

3. The Philippines Department of Health (DOH)

The third project is a partnership with The Philippines Department of Health (DOH). IDinsight will support the DOH with an overall measurement strategy for the country’s universal healthcare policy, which will allow all Filipinos to access quality health services without financial risks. Our work will focus on the design of an annual, national survey to understand patients’ experiences of the new health policy. This survey will serve as the key decision-making tool for DOH’s technical assistance and provide policy guidance for national- and local-level health systems, with results reported to the Philippine Congress to measure the policy’s success. 

“Insights from our retrospective assessment have enabled us to increase the chances that the work we do will increase our partners’ impact. One way we are doing that is by internally funding high-impact projects for which we do not have earmarked financial support.

 

Based on key elements of successful client engagements identified through our internal learning exercise, we can better select the right partners and projects for the fund, and provide a simple pathway for donors to do the most good.”

– Ruth Levine, IDinsight CEO

Read more about how the fund works here. Those interested in contributing can reach out to IDinsight’s Director of Strategic Initiatives, Meg Battle, to learn more.