I’m involved in a payment by results programme providing roughly 850,000 people with drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) services in Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The consortium, called SWIFT (Sustainable WASH in Fragile Contexts), is led by Oxfam and includes Tearfund, ODI , WSUP and a host of other NGOs.
Payment by Results means the donor, the UK Department for International Development (DFID), pays us only once we can prove the work is already done: some payment for completing key activities; some for setting up water and sanitation services andhygiene promotion outreach; and the last portion only if we can show that services are lasting, one and two years down the line. No evidence, no payment.
Justine Greening wants payment by results to be ‘a major part of the way DFID works in the future’. There’s plenty of heated discussion in the research and policy community on payment by results and its variants, but fewer views from the sharp end of delivery. Clearly, we need to know not just what payment by results means for donors like DFID and the organisations they fund, but also for the people we are trying to reach…
