The UK government’s Department for International Development (DFID) wants Payment by Results (PbR) to be a major part of the way it works in future, and other donors look set to follow suit. What does this mean for the WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) sector, and particularly for NGOs and their partners seeking to implement WASH programmes at scale?

In 2014, DFID launched a WASH Results Programme which aims to reach 4.5 million people by December 2015, supporting achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. The programme is financed on a PbR basis: the three delivering consortia receive payments only upon third-party verification that they have achieved a set of agreed results. Based largely on an internal review of the SWIFT Consortium’s experience of delivering the WASH Results Programme, this learning brief identifies a number of key issues to consider in incorporating the requirements of a PbR contract into the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of a WASH programme.