Measuring the effects of interventions in BRAC, and how this has driven 'development'

BRAC started out as a limited relief operation in 1972 in a remote region in Bangladesh and has become probably the largest nongovernmental development organisation in the world. Organising the poor using communities' own human and material resources, BRAC has developed a holistic development approach geared towards inclusion, using tools like microfinance, education, healthcare, legal services, community empowerment, social enterprises and BRAC University. Its work now touches the lives of an estimated 135 million people in 12 countries in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. BRAC established a Research and Evaluation Division (RED) in 1975 that, over time, has grown and developed as a multidisciplinary independent research unit. The division has been playing an important role in designing BRAC's development interventions, monitoring progress, documenting achievements and undertaking impact assessment studies. It provides an analytical basis for BRAC's programmatic decisions, fine-tuning it for better performance and making development efforts evidence-based, effective and community-sensitive. This article uses specific examples to demonstrate how a close link between evaluation and research, and project planning and implementation can drive a dynamic process of 'development', both in the sense of economic and social development of communities and in the sense of institutional change and innovation within BRAC itself. For example, research on the distribution of benefits in microfinance demonstrated that it rarely reached the 'ultra-poor', that is, those spending >80 per cent of income on food and still not reaching 80 per cent of calorie requirements. The ultra-poor tend to have limited social assets; this is a reason why they may not be included as members of self-selected microfinance groups, and there is a considerable literature on this. In 2002, this led directly to the introduction of a package of specific measures, centred on 'asset-transfer', which has enabled hundreds of thousands to 'graduate' from ultra-poverty and has been replicated in at least 11 countries. Results have been verified extensively through rigorous evaluation and are contributing to a continuing global policy dialogue on the effectiveness of different approaches to 'social safety nets'. This article also explores how organisational structures in BRAC aid or impede the reporting on results and the documentation of effects. It also examines the relationship between programme Management Information System and rigorous evaluation and the institutional factors encouraging or retarding BRAC's focus on results measurement and the development of a positive institutional culture. Specifically, BRAC RED focuses on the method that is best suited for each context and frequently conducts research using mixed methodology, with a good blend of qualitative and quantitative research. This has been understood from the beginning, but has also been borne out by experience throughout BRAC's development.