USAID Improving Design, Evidence, and Learning

EI leads the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Improving Design, Evidence, and Learning (IDEAL) contract in partnership with Foundations of Success, NORC at the University of Chicago, and World Resources Institute.  

In programming millions of dollars each year in biodiversity and climate change funds, USAID’s decisions shape outcomes for irreplaceable ecosystems and the communities that depend on them worldwide. IDEAL will provide support for all stages of the Program Cycle for biodiversity and climate change programming at USAID and improve the Agency’s ability to design, implement, and adaptively manage programs with sustainable and impactful results.  

During this 5-year activity, EI and our partners will improve the quality of and connection between adaptive management, the evidence base, and applied learning to support better biodiversity and climate programming decisions. Our team’s sectoral, design, evidence, and learning Specialists will facilitate high-quality Program Cycle decisions, increase evidence generation and use, and nurture a culture for applied learning across networks and by users.  

IDEAL builds on the ten years of impact through made through the predecessor activities, Measuring Impact (MI) and MI2, and incorporates lessons learned from USAID’s Program Cycle Mechanism.  

Cover photo by Jason Houston for USAID.