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Paper short abstract

This presentation introduces evaluative reasoning as a conceptual, ethical and methodological response to valuing humanitarian innovation. We will present the rationale, development and potential application of our framework, suited to a complex and uncertain sector and environments.

Paper long abstract

Value for Money (VfM) is an evaluative question about the merit, worth and significance of resource use (Peterson and Skolits, 2020) increasingly required as part of evaluations, including those of development and humanitarian programmes funded by the ODA budget.

Quantitative approaches such as cost-benefit analysis (CBA) are frequently regarded as the gold standard, but they rely on extensive, precise data and high levels of quantification rarely feasible in humanitarian contexts.

In contrast, innovation can be described as a “process of virtuous ignorance” (Warner, 2017) being inherently uncertain, exploratory and iterative, with high failure rates, complicating efforts to measure costs and benefits. Yet, in a context of shrinking budgets and increasing humanitarian needs, ensuring that limited funds are used responsibility and to maximise benefits is critical.

To address this, we at Elrha have developed a VfM assessment framework specifically tailored to humanitarian innovation, seeking to align credibility and robustness with humanitarian principles. In doing so, we explored the potential offered by common Value for Money approaches, with a particular focus on CBA, given its ability to bring together a range of benefits, tangible and intangible, to a single clear figure, easy to compare to benchmarks, through the monetisation of benefits. Testing CBA on two humanitarian innovations in partnership with economic VfM specialists identified a range of conceptual, ethical and practical problems to applying CBA to the humanitarian innovation sector.

Conceptually, CBA is ill-suited to representing qualitative outcomes and complex values without resorting to extensive assumptions. Market distortions and lack of relevant willingness-to-pay data undermine efforts to monetise intangible benefits, resulting in apparent precision at the expense of accuracy. Ethically, ‘traditional’ methods used to derive values for benefits in conducting a CBA would, in the humanitarian innovation sector, force choices which should not have to be made and may lead to discrimination through rationality. The utilitarian basis of CBA does not align with humanitarian values, and the aggregation of results can mask risks of harm to vulnerable populations. Practically, conducting CBA around humanitarian innovation incurs significant resource and skill demands - unlikely to lead to good ‘value for money’ of the analysis itself.

Elrha's framework evaluates humanitarian innovation against six benefit criteria (likelihood of success, learning potential, significance of change, scalability, equity, and environmental impact) and two cost criteria, development and implementation expenses. Each assessment is accompanied by transparent justification and the full results are subject to a ‘do no harm’ review that supersedes other considerations.

Rather than targeting a single summary score, this approach is designed to facilitate dialogue among practitioners, funders, and policymakers. By integrating both qualitative and quantitative evidence, it encourages transparent discussion of tradeoffs and fosters more informed, evidence-based decisions about innovation selection and funding in dynamic and uncertain contexts.

This presentation shares the rationale, development, and application of our framework, highlighting its capacity to support responsible investment decisions in humanitarian innovation. The approach demonstrates how methodological adaptation can meet the sector’s ethical and practical requirements while promoting meaningful VfM assessments.