Note: This page summarizes the rationale behind GiveWell service contracts with IDinsight and Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA). IDinsight and IPA staff reviewed this page prior to publication.
In a nutshell
In July 2026, GiveWell entered into two service contracts to establish central "survey delivery units" (SDUs) that commission and oversee field surveys, for different geographies, on GiveWell's behalf. We expect to fund $6 million to $20 million in survey work through these two units over the next three years.
We made these contracts because:
- Independent surveys are central to our cost-effectiveness estimates, but the grantmakers who need that data often lack the time and expertise to commission and oversee them well. The units take on procurement, survey design, quality assurance, and basic analysis, so grantmakers can focus on the research question. (more)
- We think the contracts are a good use of funds from a value-of-information perspective. We roughly guess they would pay for themselves even if only one survey leads to a major grantmaking update. (more)
- We chose IDinsight for its track record on GiveWell surveys and its work on sampling methodology, and Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) for its network of country offices and survey experts. Running two units reduces our risk if one underperforms. (more)
Our main reservations are:
- Coordinating two units and auditing their quality checks may take more GiveWell staff time than we expect. (more)
- The firms may not be able to scale fast enough if survey demand rises sharply. (more)
- A unit could, over many surveys, have survey demand outpace staff and management capacity, which could risk the quality checks which make survey data reliable enough for high-stakes decisions. (more)
Published: August 2026
What we think these contracts will do
GiveWell often relies on independent field surveys to check the assumptions behind our largest grants, but commissioning and overseeing a survey well takes time and survey expertise that our grantmaking teams may not have. These contracts create standing SDUs that take that work off teams' plates, so we can commission more, and better-designed, surveys as our portfolio grows.
Under the two contracts, IDinsight and IPA each maintain a central team or a "survey delivery unit," responsible for commissioning and overseeing surveys in an assigned set of countries. A unit either runs each survey directly or subcontracts a local survey firm, and is responsible for sampling, quality assurance, implementation oversight, and basic analysis.1 For example, if our malaria team wanted to measure insecticide-treated net durability in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the unit would design the survey, run the procurement to select a survey firm, conduct quality assurance throughout data collection, and produce the analytical report.
We are uncertain how much survey work will flow through the units. Our best guess is that GiveWell teams will commission $6 million to $20 million of survey work across the two firms over the three-year contract period. In our request for proposals, we asked each firm to plan for roughly 12 surveys.2
The contracts
In July 2026, GiveWell entered into two three-year service contracts with IPA and with IDinsight, to establish a survey delivery unit at each organization. We have divided locations between the two firms, prioritizing work related to existing partnerships and in-country relationships based on the scope of work. The goal is that each firm leads where it can build on its existing work.3
A key change from how GiveWell previously worked is that the contracts include funding for persistent central teams at IPA and IDinsight that can provide quality oversight and help turn grantmakers' open-ended requests into concrete technical proposals.
The central teams are also responsible for quality oversight and tracking best practices.4 For example, they have been tasked with developing a guidance document on survey sampling.5
The case for the contract
Cost-effectiveness
We think the contracts are a good use of funds from a value-of-information perspective — the value of better data in improving where we direct money. Independent surveys regularly check assumptions that drive large grants, and we expect most surveys run through the units to confirm what we already believe, while a few overturn it. The value of the program is concentrated in that minority.
In one recent case, a GiveWell-commissioned coverage survey found that a program led to much lower chlorination rates than the grantee's own monitoring indicated, which moved our cost-effectiveness estimate for a $65 million program from roughly 7x to roughly 2x as cost-effective as our benchmark.6 If $20 million dollars of survey work through a unit revealed one similar case, then the value of this contract would be approximately 13x our benchmark.7
We expect that the SDUs will also save researcher time and raise survey quality. Centralizing contracting, design, and analysis removes a workload that has, for at least one recent survey we considered funding, been our main reservation about commissioning the survey at all. We expect that lowering this burden will allow us to commission more surveys, and that standardized sampling protocols and active data audits will ensure the resulting data remains robust enough for high-stakes decisions.
The partners: why we chose IDinsight and IPA
We ran a competitive request for proposals (RFP) and selected both IDinsight and IPA. Contracting with two firms reduces our risk exposure if one delivers poor-quality work and prepares us for a scenario where the number of surveys we need rises over time.
IDinsight is an international nonprofit that helps global development organizations generate and use rigorous evidence.8 They have done substantial survey and evaluation work for GiveWell, including in an oversight role on prior survey projects.9 We have already funded about $3.3 million of survey work in northern Nigeria that the IDinsight SDU will partially oversee.10
IPA is an international research nonprofit with a wide network of country offices and a roster of survey and methods experts.11 They have a large country office in Nigeria, and experience in countries relevant to our grantmaking.12 They already have about $2.8 million of GiveWell-funded survey work that the SDU will partially oversee across three projects.13
Risks and reservations
- Coordination could absorb more GiveWell staff time than we expect. Aligning two units on demand and scheduling, and auditing the quality checks each team runs, will take time. We plan to invest early in systems that make quality documentation easy to review, let our project managers handle most scheduling themselves, and use some central research capacity for audits.
- The firms may not be able to scale fast enough if survey demand rises sharply. Demand could grow quickly — for example, if some of our larger grantees chose to route their recurring post-campaign coverage surveys through the SDUs rather than contract separately, or if our grantmaking rate grew substantially. Adding to a unit's capacity requires six months' notice under the service contracts, so a sudden surge could outpace either firm's ability to bring on qualified staff, slowing surveys or straining quality. However, running two units gives us more total capacity to draw on, and we will review expected demand against each team's size every six months.
- We may need to spend more time iterating on survey design than we expect. We plan to build shared question banks and pre-approved sampling plans early so each new survey requires fewer custom decisions.
- A unit could deprioritize oversight over time. A central team running many surveys could have survey demand outpace staff and management capacity, leading them to skip or compress the detailed checks needed for high-quality data. We plan to audit key quality processes throughout the contract.
- The units may not save money if too few surveys flow through them. Fixed staffing costs are only worth it if spread across enough surveys, and could inflate individual survey budgets. However, both contracts let us scale a unit down with six months' notice, and each firm already has existing GiveWell survey work likely to be routed through its unit (see above).
Plans for follow-up
We expect to engage intensively, especially early on, meeting with both firms at least quarterly to align on upcoming surveys, plan capacity, and share lessons. Early engagement will focus on developing sampling guidance and the process for commissioning new surveys. Every six months we will review survey quality, the firms' performance, and expected future demand; decide whether to resize either central team; and set any discretionary performance bonus.
Internal forecasts
For these contracts, we are recording the following forecasts:
| Confidence | Prediction | By time | Resolution |
|---|---|---|---|
| 70% | We renew the contract for at least one firm after the initial three-year period | July 2029 | |
| 50% | At least 15 surveys are conducted through the units | February 2028 | |
| 50% | The number of surveys GiveWell conducts per research team member doubles after the units launch | July 2029 | |
| 40% | A look-back on the highest value-of-information surveys finds that those surveys alone have value of information cost-effectiveness above 10x, even when considering all funded surveys as part of the cost | July 2029 |
Our process
- We ran a competitive request for proposals and received five proposals.
- The investigation lead met with each bidder before and after submission.
- We spoke with two other funders about their experience with open-ended monitoring-and-evaluation contracts.
- We spoke with GiveWell grantmakers and compiled a record of surveys already commissioned through GiveWell grants.
Relationship disclosures
A GiveWell staff member involved in this contract has a personal friendship with one of the managers on the IPA team from when they were colleagues at IDinsight, where they both worked earlier in their careers.
Sources
- 1"The Survey Delivery Unit would handle most operational work, including contracting with local firms, refining questionnaires, and monitoring data quality." GiveWell, Request for Proposals: Survey Delivery Unit, 2026
- 2"The initial contract would cover roughly 12 surveys over three years, totaling at least $3 million, with the goal of expanding into an ongoing relationship." GiveWell, Request for Proposals: Survey Delivery Unit, 2026
- 3GiveWell, Request for Proposals: Survey Delivery Unit, 2026
- 4"We expect robust knowledge management systems to ensure consistent, high-quality survey implementation…We expect tight enumerator feedback loops built around multiple quality assurance methods…GiveWell will randomly audit most steps of the survey process to ensure survey best practices are being followed." GiveWell, Request for Proposals: Survey Delivery Unit, 2026
- 5Innovations for Poverty Action, conversation with GiveWell, April 2026 (unpublished)
- 6For more on this data update and how we responded to it, see GiveWell, "Following the data on Dispensers for Safe Water," 2026 or our lookback.
- 7We would be able to redirect that $65 million from the ~2x program to other opportunities at our ~6x bar. As a fourfold improvement in cost-effectiveness on a $65 million grant, that information would be worth roughly $260 (4x65) million in benchmark-equivalent terms. Dividing by the $20 million dollar cost that pencils out to 13x our benchmark.
- 8"IDinsight is a mission-driven global advisory, data analytics, and research organization that helps global development leaders maximize their social impact. We tailor a wide range of data and evidence tools, including randomized evaluations and machine learning, to help decision-makers design effective programs and rigorously test what works to support communities." IDinsight, About Us.
- 9For example, see our beneficiary preferences survey grant. For further grants to IDinsight, see here.
- 10This includes a $1.5 million survey grant to measure rates of severe and acute malnutrition in Northern Nigeria and a $1.8 million grant for ITN monitoring and evaluation. We will link to summaries of these grants once published.
- 11"We are a global research and policy nonprofit committed to reducing global poverty with evidence. With a network of partners and researchers, we design and test innovative solutions, support our partners to generate and use data and evidence, and help bring proven approaches to scale across the globe." Innovations for Poverty Action, About.
- 12See more about IPA's Nigeria office here, and countries where IPA works here.
- 13This includes a $500,000 grant for external measurement of vitamin A supplementation coverage in Northern Nigeria, a $1.2 million grant for vaccination coverage surveys in Nigeria, and a $1.1 million grant for an impact evaluation of dual active ingredient ITNs in Nigeria. We will link to summaries of these grants once published.