Development Initiatives

Development Initiatives’ (DI) seeks to make information about aid and other poverty-related financing more transparent, accessible, and useable, with a goal of ending absolute poverty by 2030. To achieve this vision, DI is rebranding its "aidinfo" program to reflect the broader reach of DI’s charitable goals to improve access to and use of all types of information. An Organizational Effectiveness grant to DI would support a new branding plan that reflects this evolution and brings the former "aidinfo" program's public brand into greater alignment with DI's other charitable programs.

An Organizational Effectiveness grant to Development Initiatives (DI) will support the refinement of a communications and engagement plan. In 2011, DI articulated a new five-year strategy, including the bold long-term goal "to end absolute poverty by 2025". To achieve this vision, DI recognizes the importance of understanding better their target audiences and the communications and engagement tactics that will best enable DI to realize the goal of eradicating poverty.

Development Initiatives implements the aidinfo program so that citizens in developing countries can use information about foreign aid to hold governments, donors, and service providers to account and thereby increase the effectiveness of aid. The program also supports the uptake and implementation of the International Aid Transparency Initiative data standard by piloting citizen efforts to access and analyze the data. Moving into its third phase, aidinfo plans to expand its direct engagement in East Africa, working with local groups, including other Hewlett Foundation grantees, to strengthen the analysis of aid information in relation to domestic budget information. The objective is to foster feedback loops connecting citizens—the ultimate beneficiaries of aid—to the decision makers who allocate aid so that it can be used most effectively and in alignment with the other resources available for poverty reduction and better service delivery.