Impact methodology

This page outlines how the beneficiary numbers quoted on our website are calculated.

WSUP’s global monitoring and evaluation methodology is based around the core framework below, which illustrates how each of our five strategic areas (rows in the diagram) are tracked at various levels (output, attributable outcome, contribution outcome and end impact).

As illustrated above, there are two distinct types of beneficiary, direct and indirect beneficiaries, which are both tracked at the “Attributable Outcomes” level. The figures quoted on the country pages of our website include both direct and indirect beneficiaries.

Direct beneficiaries

Direct beneficiaries result from projects in Strategic Area 1: Service delivery and models. These are projects where WSUP takes an active role in implementation of a WASH facility or service improvement.

This could involve funding the construction of water kiosks providing safe water, or water network improvements such as pumping stations or new treatment facilities which significantly improve service levels for people already connected to the network. In the water kiosk example, a direct beneficiary figure would be calculated using water kiosk usage records.

In the water network improvement example, a direct beneficiary figure would be based on the total number of users connected to the water network who experience a significant improvement.

Indirect beneficiaries

Indirect beneficiaries result from work in Strategic Areas 2-4: Capacity development and Sector influence. In capacity development projects, WSUP supports external organisations to implement projects on their own account.

Because WSUP has assisted a third party to deliver the project, rather than implementing it ourselves, these are counted as indirect rather than direct beneficiaries.

Taking the example above of a water network improvement but delivering this as a capacity development project, WSUP might provide technical support to help the utility decide the best course of action to improve network performance.

This would then be funded and implemented by the utility themselves, and WSUP would estimate the number of indirect beneficiaries based on utility data.

Similarly, for sector influence projects, WSUP estimates the number of indirect beneficiaries with improved WASH services resulting from policy changes that we have influenced.

For ease of comprehension, WSUP has presented combined direct and indirect beneficiary figures on our country pages on the website.

Environmental sanitation

An environmental sanitation intervention is one that reduces community-level risk of exposure to faecal pathogens. Environmental sanitation beneficiaries do not generate beneficiaries in the same way as improvements to sanitation facilities or sanitation services, and are therefore tracked separately.

For simplicity, where we have reported beneficiary data on the country pages of the website, we have grouped environmental sanitation beneficiaries with sanitation beneficiaries.

WSUP Advisory

As well as calculating impact of our work in our six core countries, we also measure impact from WSUP Advisory in terms of beneficiaries. This data is not published on our website but is available for WSUP partners on request.

For further detail covering beneficiary estimations and the rest of the M&E framework, please see WSUP’s M&E Guide.