Dioptra: An Automated Cost Analysis Tool for Humanitarian and Development Organizations

• In Event: Making Cents: How tools and methods are helping the sector conduct cost analysis

Proposal

Led by the International Rescue Committee (IRC), Dioptra is a web-based software developed by a consortium of NGOs and enables rapid, rigorous, and consistent cost-efficiency analysis across organizations and sectors. The cost results are used to compare and prioritize program activities that can deliver the most impact to the most people per dollar spent. Using a standardized methodology across cost analyses allows for meaningful comparative cost analyses to inform action for resource allocation improvement.

Using Dioptra, everyday program staff are able to calculate the full cost per output of program activities within 3 hours, compare results against existing analyses, and review evidence-based strategies to reach more people and have greater impact with limited resources. By guiding users through the analysis process, Dioptra enables anyone to run an ingredients-based approach cost analysis without specialized expertise while ensuring the results are based on established metrics, uses standardized cost categories, and can be meaningfully compared to existing data. The tool allows program staff to focus on providing crucial estimates of how different resources were used across activities within a project, which are not captured in any standard data collection processes or systems across the humanitarian and development sectors.

To date, Dioptra has facilitated hundreds of cost-efficiency analyses across 20+ program types to add to the learning and knowledge on the cost per client of humanitarian and development programming. The consortium provides a high-trust environment for sharing of technical capacity and results, which has facilitated unprecedented learning across organizations. The Dioptra Consortium is sustainable and growing and currently includes Action Against Hunger, CARE, the Danish Refugee Council, IRC, Mercy Corps, and Save the Children.

This presentation will discuss how Dioptra supports Sectoral Learning through exploring the typical cost-per-output of common activities and analyzing how their cost-per-output is driven by differences in activity design or program context, as well as performance management. Using Dioptra, organizations can analyze the cost-efficiency of a program periodically and compare to benchmarks for that activity, and assess whether greater reach might be possible if the program design were adapted.

In addition, this presentation will also review the evolution of the Dioptra Consortium over the last 5 years, successes, and lessons learned as a result of developing and implementing a multi-organizational tool.

Author

• Kayla Hoyer, IRC