How-matters.org attempts to revive and magnify compassion and empathy within the international aid and philanthropic sectors. Most of the time, the needs of institutions overshadow the needs of local civil society and grassroots initiatives, thereby retarding or even preventing real change for real people.

Much is being lost in the abstraction and over-technicalisation of development work.

www.how-matters.org/links-resources

QuODA is an assessment of the Quality of Official Development Assistance (ODA) provided by 23 donor countries and more than 100 aid agencies. Aid quality is assessed using 31 indicators grouped in four dimensions that reflect the international consensus of what constitutes high-quality aid:

• Maximizing Efficiency

• Fostering Institutions

• Reducing Burden

• Transparency and Learning

Rankings can be viewed in separate indices and in the Quality of Aid Diamond, which makes it possible to quickly compare countries and agencies across all four dimensions. The new edition of QuODA also allows users to begin to assess change in donors' performance over time. Percentage change for each donor on each indicator common to both the 2010 and 2011 editions, and on each dimension, can be viewed in the Change vs. Prior Year bar charts.

The authors hope that QuODA will be a catalyst for lively debates and, more importantly, for substantial improvements in how aid is provided.

Read more on www.cgdev.org/section/topics/aid_effectiveness/quoda

The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) is a network of 64 affiliated professors around the world who are united by their use of Randomized Evaluations (REs) to answer questions critical to poverty alleviation. J-PAL's mission is to reduce poverty by ensuring that policy is based on scientific evidence. J-PAL works to achieve this by:

• Conducting Rigorous Impact Evaluations- J-PAL researchers conduct randomized evaluations to test and improve the effectiveness of programs and policies aimed at reducing poverty. There are more than 318  evaluations that have been either completed or are ongoing.

• Building Capacity- J-PAL provides expertise to people interested in rigorous program evaluation, and training to others on how to conduct randomized evaluations.

• Impacting Policy- J-PAL’s policy group performs cost-effectiveness analysis to identify the most effective ways to achieve policy goals, disseminates this knowledge to policymakers, and works with governments, NGOs, foundations, and international development organizations to promote the scale-up of highly effective policies and programs around the world.

J-PAL is organized both by regional offices and by research themes called Programs. J-PAL's headquarters is a center within the Economics Department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), with independent regional offices in Africa, Europe, Latin America, and South Asia that are hosted by a local university. J-PAL's Programs include Agriculture, Education, Energy and Environment, Finance, Health, Labor Markets, and Political Economy and Governance.

With the growing importance of evidence to support public policy choice this organisation provides a powerful and highly credible source of global development policy impact assessment.

http://www.povertyactionlab.org/policy-lessons

International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) funds quality studies that will have a real policy impact and affect many lives. In terms of standards. This means its the only studies that are built around a credible counter factual with an evaluation design based on the underlying programme theory to learn what works and why, and also at what cost.

We encourage studies which utilise innovative methodologies, or delve into crucial evaluation questions which have not been the subject of previous research. Priority is given to proposals responding to a clear demand from policy makers. Grantees are expected to ensure full cooperation from implementing agencies, and other interested actors.

The strategic components of our programme are:

• Generating new evidence of what works
• Synthesizing and disseminating this evidence
• Building a culture of evidence based policy-making
• Developing capacity to produce and use impact evaluations
• Developing 3ie’s institutional capacity, governance and management systems

http://www.3ieimpact.org/database_of_impact_evaluations.html