Evidence Action — IDinsight Data Analysis Top-Up Grant (December 2024)

Note: This page summarizes the rationale behind a GiveWell grant to Evidence Action. Evidence Action staff reviewed this page prior to publication.

Published: June 2025

The intervention

IFA supplementation is done by providing oral supplements, in either syrup or tablet form.1 Evidence Action supports IFA supplementation programs that aim to reach school-going children ages 5-19 years once per week and children ages 6-59 months twice per week.2

We expect most of the benefits of this intervention to come from iron, rather than folic acid, supplementation.3 We think there is strong evidence that iron supplementation reduces cases of anemia and that there is weak to moderate quality evidence that iron supplementation, with or without folic acid, increases cognitive ability. We discuss the evidence for IFA supplementation in greater detail in our intervention report on iron supplementation.

We have several uncertainties about the evidence for iron fortification/supplementation programs, which we are currently working on addressing.4

The organization

Evidence Action provides technical assistance to the Indian government to implement IFA programs.5 Since March 2018, we've directed approximately $13.7 million to support Evidence Action's technical assistance program for IFA supplementation in five Indian states: Haryana, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Uttarakhand.6

The grant

In August 2022, GiveWell recommended a $9.2 million grant to Evidence Action to support its IFA Technical Assistance (TA) program across five Indian states (Haryana, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Uttarakhand).

This grant will enable IDinsight to deliver a preliminary endline report of that program by the end of January 2025, allowing GiveWell to evaluate the program for potential renewal by July 2025.7 Without this additional funding, IDinsight estimates their analysis would be delayed by at least 1-2 months due to the initial contracting delays and unforeseen data cleaning challenges.8 This delay would compress our timeline for grant investigation and potentially compromise the quality of our renewal decision process.

Budget for grant activities

The grant is an additional $31,159 to IDinsight for:

• $20,000 to fund an IDinsight Senior Associate for two months.
• $10,000 for processing costs related to Evidence Action’s India entity, allowing data-sharing contracts to proceed smoothly while avoiding regulatory challenges.9

The budget breakdown is:10

Budget Category	Amount
IDinsight Senior Associate (2 months)	$20,940
Processing Costs (EvAc and EvAc India)	$10,219
Total	$31,159

The case for the grant

• Making this grant allows us to maintain our renewal timeline: Evidence Action's IFA program in five Indian states (Haryana, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Uttarakhand) is currently funded through July 2026.11 We are planning to make a decision to renew funding for that program by July 2025. This grant enables IDinsight to deliver preliminary endline results by January 2025, providing a full six months for our renewal grant investigation. Maintaining this timeline is critical because Evidence Action requires at least one year's notice if funding will not be renewed, allowing them sufficient time to either secure alternative funding sources or responsibly wind down operations.12
• Broader impact on additional IFA grants: We think the results from this report will potentially inform our decision to make expansion grants in other Indian states and Pakistan. Receiving these results earlier in the year will facilitate planning for these investigations by demonstrating how Evidence Action’s program affects IFA coverage.

Risks and reservations

• Limited exploration of alternatives: Due to the time sensitivity of the request, we were unable to explore alternative solutions to completing this work by the January 31 deadline.

Plans for follow up

• We will track IDinsight’s progress and expect to receive preliminary results by January 2025. If the results are delayed, we will re-evaluate our timeline for considering a renewal grant.

Internal forecasts

For this grant, we are recording the following forecasts:

Confidence	Prediction	By time	Resolution
70%	We receive preliminary results on endline by the end of Jan 2025, conditional on making this grant	End of Jan 2025	-

Our process

• We reviewed the funding request from Evidence Action.
• We discussed the request with Evidence Action and IDinsight via email.
• We assessed the impact of potential delays on our broader IFA funding decisions.

Sources

Document	Source
IDinsight, Additional Costs for Five-State Endline Analysis, November 2024	Unpublished
Evidence Action, Our Work in India	Source (archive)
GiveWell, Evidence Action — Iron and Folic Acid (IFA) Supplementation in India (August 2022)	Source
GiveWell, Evidence Action Beta — iron and folic acid supplementation ('Phase 2')	Source
GiveWell, Iron supplementation for school-age children	Source

• 1
  • "Iron supplementation is the oral consumption of iron-containing compounds, typically in pill form." GiveWell, "Iron supplementation for school-age children"
  • "Based on the technical guidelines, children <5 are recommended to receive 2 doses of IFA syrup per week and children 5-19 years are recommended to receive one IFA tablet weekly." Evidence Action, IFA investigation plan, 2022 (unpublished)

• 2

  "With the IFA program, given it is a routine program that requires weekly/bi-weekly administration…" Evidence Action, IFA investigation plan, 2022 (unpublished)

• 3

  In the last grant we recommended to Evidence Action, we wrote, "In this report, we primarily discuss the effects of iron rather than folic acid.

  We have not carefully considered the potential benefits of folic acid as distinct from iron. Our understanding is that in some of the iron supplementation studies we rely on, folic acid is also part of the treatment. However, our rough impression from reviewing the folic acid literature is that most of the potentially important public health impacts of folic acid come from providing supplements to pregnant women to reduce birth defects, and we expect that pregnant women would be a small portion of beneficiaries targeted by this program.

  To simplify our analysis, we have focused on the effects of iron. However, our analysis would be conservative if the public health effects of folic acid in this population are larger than we currently expect." GiveWell, "Evidence Action Beta — iron and folic acid supplementation ('Phase 2')"

  We are not aware of any further work on folic acid that has been conducted since.

• 4

  See this section of our previous grant page for more on the evidence behind IFA.

• 5

  "In 2019, at the request of the government, we began providing technical assistance to state governments…We helped five state governments in India increase the number of children reached with weekly supplementation by nearly three-fold." Evidence Action, Our Work in India.

• 6
  • In March 2018, we recommended funding ($320,000) to the Evidence Action Accelerator to scope a technical assistance (TA) program for IFA supplementation in India.
  • Based on the results of this scoping work, we recommended a grant (approximately $3.4 million) in December 2018 to Evidence Action to scale a pilot of the IFA TA program and a grant in March 2019 ($800,000) to evaluate the program.
  • In August 2022, we recommended funding (approximately $9.2 million) to support the IFA TA program across five states in India (Haryana, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Uttarakhand).
  • $320,000 + ~$3,400,000 + $800,000 + ~$9,200,000 = ~$13,720,000.

• 7

  "This will enable the team to add one Senior Associate from December 2024 onwards, which is necessary to offset the time lost due to unforeseen delays…To meet the deadline of Jan 30th 2025 delivery of the preliminary final report." IDinsight, Additional Costs for Five-State Endline Analysis, November 2024 (unpublished).

• 8

  "Without this funding, we anticipate IDi will face at least a 1-2 month delay in sharing results and may have difficulties in finding staff time for the analysis." Evidence Action, email to GiveWell, December 2, 2024 (unpublished).

• 9

  "These are administrative costs and required transfer pricing to cover EvAc and EAII’s handling of the grant. Originally, our contract with IDinsight was between the two US entities, but we decided to re-sign a contract between our two Indian entities…We believe this is the safest approach to contracting/data sharing and worth the extra costs." Evidence Action, email to GiveWell, December 2, 2024 (unpublished).

• 10

  IDinsight, Additional Costs for Five-State Endline Analysis, November 2024 (unpublished).

• 11

  "We're recommending a grant of $9,185,495 for four years, from mid-2022 to mid-2026." GiveWell, Evidence Action — Iron and Folic Acid (IFA) Supplementation in India (August 2022).

• 12

  "We would need a year to identify additional funding and/or responsibly exit states if our grant is not successful." Evidence Action, email to GiveWell, December 2, 2024 (unpublished).