Built on proof: how CARE is using data to maximize impact per dollar

Here’s where we’re investing to deliver the insights that will determine if we succeed or fail in the next 10 years:

• Cost effectiveness: tracking the value of dollars spent, in real time. CARE is building the first live cost-per-outcome dashboard of any major international NGO, grounded in current participant and financial data, so investment decisions are made on today’s realities, not last year’s reports. Our new Economics Evaluation Unit is syncing our financial systems to our impact tracking so they can constantly drive rapid decisions on value for money.
• Data infrastructure: next-gen tools for accountability. We are creating a unified global data system tracking results for individual participants— moving from headline statistics to trajectories that show what changed in people’s lives, how it happened, and whether it lasted. This enables rapid strategy tracking, early identification of underperformance, and AI-driven analysis that fragmented systems cannot support.
• Community feedback loops: Successful delivery and systems change require rigorous research, a profound understanding of context, and stakeholders with meaningful ownership. Community feedback is a cornerstone of design decisions. If the people it is supposed to serve tell us it is not working for them, we adapt. If the governments we partner with say it can’t work for them—or it isn’t affordable in their budgets—we redesign for a credible solution that will work.
• Global benchmarking: designing with best-in-class evidence. We’re benchmarking our work against the best global research. Mandatory program reviews draw on more than 8,000 rigorous studies across the sector, and come from credible external researchers like J-PAL, CEGA, and IDInsight. They deliver insights that help us improve the cost-effectiveness of existing models and scale proven solutions—no matter who developed them.
• A sharply prioritized pipeline of rigorous research. We invest in new rigorous research when government and research partners see a credible path to changing millions of lives through government adoption, peer replication, or our own expansion. In those cases, we use gold-standard research designs—Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs), quasi-experimental designs — bringing peer-reviewed credibility to major evaluation and ensuring CARE’s findings enter the global research conversation, not just our own reporting.
• Smart rigor: using the most efficient method to answer the question. Not every question needs a new RCT. Funding new research where accepted proof already exists wastes money and delays long-term change. Where the sector has already proven a model works, our investment goes into the data systems that keep implementation accountable and agile.
• A delivery platform for cost-effective scale. CARE works with more than 50 million people across more than 100 countries, including some of the hardest places to deliver: conflict-affected, crisis-exposed, and institutionally fragile settings. That footprint is not proof of impact. It is the infrastructure that allows us to grow what works. CARE’s long-term relationships, context-specific insight, and real trust with communities, governments, and private-sector actors allow us to test, adapt, and expand high-performing solutions in new contexts where many models stall after the pilot stage.

Our investment discipline

This strategy creates a decision-making framework that independent evaluators can test.

Here’s how we decide where money goes, what we scale, and what we redesign:

• Benchmark the program against global research, and choose models that are most likely to deliver.
• Test whether it outperforms other options in the specific context.
• Measure people’s feedback on what is working for them, and what they need to see change.
• Track cost per outcome, and continually tweak to reduce cost to serve
• Scale when there is a credible path through government adoption, private-sector demand, peer replication, or CARE’s own expansion.
• Verify results through credible researchers.
• Redesign what does not deliver.
• Publicly report on what does not work.

For people who want an evidence-based, cost-effective way to change the world beyond one project or tool at a time, CARE wants to be your partner. Turning a good idea into impact takes high-quality research, but that’s not enough. It takes relationships with governments willing to adopt it, community trust built over decades, and local ownership that outlasts any single grant cycle.

Our evidence transformation aims to put us at the top of the pack on cost effectiveness, so we can take impact further: we know how to move a proven solution from a pilot in one village to a policy adopted by a ministry. We’ve spent decades working shoulder to shoulder with the communities and governments who make that possible. A platform like that can’t be built overnight. The invitation isn’t to support CARE because of our size or history. It’s to back a trusted platform that turns data into hundreds of millions of lives changed. Effective changemakers of the world, join us.

EVIDENCE & IMPACT SERIES

Evidence & Impact at CARE means using rigorous data to drive real change. Our thought leadership shows how what we learn shapes a results-driven strategy to end poverty. We’re after proof points that do more than look good on paper — they need to change something for people. So we don’t just count participants. We track whether their lives actually got better.