Cost Measurement at USAID: How the Initiative Has Grown and What It Has Supported

• In Event: Using Cost Measurement and Analysis For Continuous Learning and Improvement in the Education Sector

Proposal

Measuring and analyzing the cost of education interventions is essential for improving the sustainability of these interventions, enhancing localization efforts, and ensuring that quality education is reaching and can continue to reach the most marginalized populations. We know it is more expensive to improve outcomes for marginalized learners, but by how much? Cost data can help us appropriately fund interventions to reach and be effective for learners affected by crisis and conflict, learners with disabilities, out-of-school learners, and other disadvantaged populations.
In 2018, the USAID Center for Education launched the Cost Reporting Guidance for USAID-Funded Education Activities, followed by a Cost Analysis Guidance in 2020. In USAID/Education’s history, these documents were the first of their kind to provide a framework and pragmatic structure for capturing and analyzing the billions of dollars invested by USAID in education development projects. These guidance documents, updated in 2021, along with a collection of tools and resources, have supported implementing partners and evaluators to participate in the Center’s Cost Measurement Initiative and explore what we can learn and gain from these data.
In particular, the initiative’s focus on ingredient-based cost data, standard cost categories, and real-time data collection has supported the successful collection and use of cost data by USAID and its partners. When adopted by many partners for use in many interventions, this standardized approach allows for greater comparability, replicability, and usefulness of findings.
This presentation will explore the Cost Measurement Initiative and the components that make it successful. In particular, it will share the standard reporting templates, discuss the critical nature of standardized cost categories, explore the tension between burden and precision when collecting cost data, provide an overview of the different types of cost analysis and what we can learn from them, and preview how and in what directions the Center hopes the initiative can grow.
Understanding the key elements of the cost measurement initiative and related guidance will set the foundation for further presentations in this panel, which will explore how this initiative has been actualized by partners.

Authors

• Melissa Katelyn Donaher, DDI Center for Education, United States Agency for International Development USAID

• Emma Venetis, EnCompass LLC