Evidence Action Inc.
Evidence Action Inc.
1133 CONNECTICUT AVE NW STE 200
Washington DC 20036-4380
Washington DC | IRS ruling year: 2013 | EIN: 90-0874591
SEE PART III, LINE 1.
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1133 CONNECTICUT AVE NW STE 200
Washington DC 20036-4380
Washington DC | IRS ruling year: 2013 | EIN: 90-0874591
SEE PART III, LINE 1.
Great
This charity's score is 100%, earning it a Four-Star rating. If this organization aligns with your passions and values, you can give with confidence.
This overall score is calculated from multiple beacon scores: 32% Accountability & Finance, 50% Impact & Results, 7% Leadership & Adaptability, 10% Culture & Community. Learn more about our criteria and methodology.
We recognize that not all metrics and beacons equally predict a charity’s success. The percentage each beacon contributes to the organization’s overall rating depends on the number of beacons an organization has earned.
Use the tool below to select different beacons to see how the weighting shifts when only one, two, or three beacons are earned.
Rating histories are available for a growing number of rated organizations. Check back later to see if this organization has a rating history!
The IRS is significantly delayed in processing nonprofits' annual tax filings (Forms 990). As a result, the Accountability & Finance score for Evidence Action Inc. is outdated and the overall rating may not be representative of its current operations. Please check with the charity directly for any questions you may have.
Evidence Action Inc. has earned a 100% for the Accountability & Finance beacon. See the metrics below for more information.
This beacon provides an assessment of a charity's financial health (financial efficiency, sustainability, and trustworthiness) and its commitment to governance practices and policies.
This Accountability & Finance score represents IRS Form 990 data up until FY 2019, which is the most recent Form 990 currently available to us.
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Charity Navigator looks for at least 3 board members, with more than 50% of those members identified as independent (not salaried).
The presence of an independent governing body is strongly recommended by many industry professionals to allow for full deliberation and diversity of thinking on governance and other organizational matters.
Source: IRS Form 990
An Audit, Review, or Compilation provides important information about financial accountability and accuracy. Organizations are scored based on their Total Revenue Amount:
Total Revenue Amount | Expectation to Receive Credit |
---|---|
$1 million or higher | Expected to complete an audit |
$500,000 - $1 million | Expected to complete an audit, review, or compilation |
Less than $500,000 | No expectation (removed from scoring methodology) |
Source: IRS Form 990
Charity Navigator looks for the existence of a conflict of interest policy on the Form 990 as an accountability and transparency measure.
This policy protects the organization and by extension those it serves, when it is considering entering into a transaction that may benefit the private interest of an officer, director and/or key employee of the organization.
Source: IRS Form 990
Charity Navigator looks to confirm on the Form 990 that the organization has this process in place as an accountability and transparency measure.
An official record of the events that take place during a board meeting ensures that a contemporaneous document exists for future reference.
Source: IRS Form 990
Charity Navigator looks for the existence of a document retention and destruction policy per the Form 990 as an accountability and transparency measure.
This policy establishes guidelines for the handling, backing up, archiving and destruction of documents. These guidelines foster good record keeping procedures that promote data integrity.
Source: IRS Form 990
Charity Navigator looks for the existence of a whistleblower policy per the Form 990 as an accountability and transparency measure.
This policy outlines procedures for handling employee complaints, as well as a confidential way for employees to report financial or other types of mismanagement.
Source: IRS Form 990
Charity Navigator looks for a website on the Form 990 as an accountability and transparency metric.
Nonprofits act in the public trust and reporting publicly on activities is an important component.
Source: IRS Form 990
The Liabilities to Assets Ratio is determined by Total Liabilities divided by Total Assets (most recent 990). This ratio is an indicator of an organization’s solvency and/or long-term sustainability.
Liabilities to Assets Ratio | Amount of Credit Received |
---|---|
Less than 50% | Full Credit |
50% - 59.9% | Partial Credit |
60% or more | No Credit |
Source: IRS Form 990
The Program Expense Ratio is determined by Program Expenses divided by Total Expense (average of most recent three 990s). This measure reflects the percent of its total expenses a charity spends on the programs and services it exists to deliver.
Program Expense Percentage | Amount of Credit Received |
---|---|
70% or higher | Full Credit |
60% - 69.9% | Partial Credit |
50% - 59.9% | Zero Points for Program Expense Score |
Below 50% | Zero Points for Both Program Expense AND Liabilities to Assets Scores |
Source: IRS Form 990
This chart displays the trend of revenue and expenses over the past several years for this organization, as reported on their IRS Form 990.
Presented here are up to five of this organization's highest compensated employees. This compensation data includes salary, cash bonuses, and expense accounts and is displayed exactly how it is reported to the IRS. The amounts do not include nontaxable benefits, deferred compensation, or other amounts not reported on Form W-2. In some cases, these amounts may include compensation from related organizations. Read the IRS policies for compensation reporting
Source: IRS Form 990 (page 7), filing year 2019
Below are some key data points from the Exempt Organization IRS Business Master File (BMF) for this organization. Learn more about the BMF on the IRS website
Activities:
Activity data not reported from the IRS
Foundation Status:
Organization which receives a substantial part of its support from a governmental unit or the general public 170(b)(1)(A)(vi) (BMF foundation code: 15)
Affiliation:
Independent - the organization is an independent organization or an independent auxiliary (i.e., not affiliated with a National, Regional, or Geographic grouping of organizations). (BMF affiliation code: 3)
The Form 990 is a document that nonprofit organizations file with the IRS annually. We leverage finance and accountability data from it to form Encompass ratings. Click here to search for this organization's Forms 990 on the IRS website (if any are available). Simply enter the organization's name (Evidence Action Inc.) or EIN (900874591) in the 'Search Term' field.
This organization was impacted by COVID-19 in a way that effected their financial health in 2020. This normally would have reduced their star rating. Due to the unprecedented nature of the pandemic, we give charities such as this one the opportunity to share the story of COVID's impact on them, and doing this pauses our revision of their rating. Charities may submit their own pandemic responses through their nonprofit portal.
Evidence Action Inc. reported being impacted by COVID-19 in the following ways:
Program Delivery
Fundraising Capacity
Administrative Capacity
How COVID-19 impacted the organization's operations financially:
The organization’s financials were impacted in multiple ways, though we were able to adapt under these difficult circumstances. One of the main adverse impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic was to our Deworm the World Initiative, which helps governments deworm children using a school-based delivery model. With schools closed for most of the year due to lockdowns, program activities and expenditures dropped by approximately 35%. This led directly to a lower recovery of indirect costs, which are critical to paying for the operations of the organization. Despite this, we managed to make up this gap from reserves and retained our full staff complement throughout the year. Throughout the pandemic, Evidence Action’s donors remain supportive. In mid-2020 we were able to raise urgent funding that provided critical supplies to help prevent the spread of COVID in communities where Dispensers for Safe Water operates, and giving from individuals increased in 2020 compared to 2019.
How COVID-19 impacted the organization's delivery of programs:
Our Dispensers for Safe Water program adapted to ensure continued access to safe water by distributing enough chlorine for several months. We also carried out emergency distributions of soap, disinfectant, and hygiene education materials by our community-elected volunteers to help prevent COVID. Our Deworm the World Initiative also adapted significantly. In Pakistan, we worked with several states to support a new round of deworming treatments. In Kenya, following school closures, we helped the government restart school-based deworming in early 2021 and successfully prototyped a new method to validate deworming coverage with social distancing. In Nigeria, we are working with multiple states to restart school-based deworming treatments. In India, we helped shift school-based deworming programs to community-based delivery to reach children at home, along with providing iron and folic acid supplementation. We also supported states with data analysis, communications, and contact tracing.
How this organization adapted to changing conditions caused by COVID-19:
In addition to adapting our programs to accommodate lockdowns and school closures, we undertook a tremendous amount of risk analysis and planning to determine how best to keep our teams safe while ensuring continued program impact, constituting a global rapid response team that met regularly to discuss emerging program and organizational risks, and develop and monitor related action plans. We increased flexibility in leave policies for all staff globally, providing for additional COVID-related leave. As a global organization, many of our staff are accustomed to working virtually. We therefore shifted quickly into remote work across many of the countries where we operate, leveraging online and cloud-based systems while avoiding major disruptions to daily tasks. We also suspended international and domestic travel for a significant portion of 2020, relying on these same systems to continue our work and local teams’ ability to continue work in the field when sufficiently safe to do so.
Innovations the organization intends to continue permanently after the pandemic:
Most of the changes we conducted during the pandemic, in particular those related to program delivery, have been in response to adverse situations and will not be permanent, as previous modes of working have been optimized through evidence-based iterative processes of improvement over many years. The innovations or changes that have seen positive benefits will require more data to analyze whether we will continue using them. This type of analysis is currently taking place in Kenya by our MLE team to validate the promising results from a pilot we conducted that replaced in-person interviews for coverage validation of our deworming data with remote coverage validation using phone calls. In the preliminary results, the pilot, which was implemented to protect our frontline workers and beneficiaries' communities, showed similar levels of data quality and, if proven to be as robust as the traditional method, could be a more cost-effective way of conducting coverage validation in the future.
Evidence Action Inc. has earned a 100% for the Impact & Results beacon. See the metrics below for more information.
This beacon estimates the actual impact a charity has on the lives of those it serves, and determines whether it is making good use of donor resources to achieve that impact.
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Program
Dispensers for Safe Water
Activities
Evidence Action distributes water purification systems to beneficiaries.
Program Type
Water Purification
Beneficiaries Served
People living in poverty
Program Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa
Time Period of Data
1/1/2018 to 12/31/2018
Outcomes: Changes in the lives of those served by a nonprofit. They can be caused by the nonprofit.
Costs: The money spent by a nonprofit and its partners and beneficiaries.
Impact: Outcome caused by a nonprofit relative to its cost.
Cost-effectiveness: A judgment as to whether the cost was a good use of resources to cause the outcome.
Outcome Metric
A year of clean water provided to a person.
Outcome Data Source
Ratings are based on data the nonprofit itself collects on its work. We use the most recent year with sufficient data. Typically, this data allows us to calculate direct changes in participants' lives, such as increased income.
Method for Attributing Outcomes
We don't know if the observed changes were caused by the nonprofit's program or something else happening at the same time (e.g., a participant got a raise). To determine causation, we take the outcomes we observe and subtract an estimate of the outcomes that would have happened even without the program (i.e., counterfactual outcomes).
We estimate the number of person-years of clean water the nonprofit provides by comparing the person-years actually achieved to the person-years that would have been achieved even in the absence of the nonprofit (the “counterfactual”). Some beneficiaries might have accessed clean water from other providers or on their own; these counterfactual successes must be netted out of the successes we observe. Otherwise, we would be attributing a change in a person’s life (gaining clean water) to the nonprofit when it would have happened anyway. Few nonprofits estimate the counterfactual themselves, so we construct our own counterfactual estimate based on research and publicly available data. We research the average rate with which clean water access is increasing year over year in that location, and assume that, if the nonprofit had not intervened, that trend would have continued.
Cost Data Source
After estimating the program's outcomes, we need to determine how much it cost to achieve those outcomes. All monetary costs are counted, whether they are borne by a nonprofit service deliverer or by the nonprofit’s public and private partners.
Cost Calculation
$4,285,899 program costs + $0 partner costs + $0 beneficiary costs = $4,285,899 total costs
We calculate impact, defined as the change in outcomes attributable to a program divided by the cost to achieve those outcomes.
Impact Calculation
$4,285,899 total costs / 9,144,994 person-years of clean water = roughly $0.50 provides clean water to a person for a year.
Benchmark for Rating
Impact & Results scores of water purification programs are based on the cost to provide clean water relative to the market cost that a person incurs to buy water in that country. Programs receive an Impact & Results score of 100 if they provide water for less than 75% of the estimated market costs, and a score of 80 if they do so for less than 125%. If a nonprofit reports impact but doesn't meet the benchmark for cost-effectiveness, it earns a score of 65.
Determination
Highly cost-effective
Evidence Action Inc. reported its three largest programs on its FY 2019 Form 990 as:
Spent in most recent FY
Percent of program expenses
DEWORM THE WORLD INITIATIVE: EVIDENCE ACTION'S DEWORM THE WORLD INITIATIVE HELPS TO TRANSLATE EVIDENCE INTO WIDESPREAD PRACTICE BY ADVOCATING FOR SCHOOL-BASED DEWORMING TO POLICYMAKERS AND PROVIDING T ... (More)
DEWORM THE WORLD INITIATIVE: EVIDENCE ACTION'S DEWORM THE WORLD INITIATIVE HELPS TO TRANSLATE EVIDENCE INTO WIDESPREAD PRACTICE BY ADVOCATING FOR SCHOOL-BASED DEWORMING TO POLICYMAKERS AND PROVIDING TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE TO LAUNCH, STRENGTHEN AND SUSTAIN SCHOOL-BASED DEWORMING PROGRAMS. EVIDENCE ACTION WORKS DIRECTLY WITH GOVERNMENTS TO RAPIDLY SCALE PROGRAMS TARGETING ALL AT-RISK SCHOOL-AGE CHILDREN. REGULAR DEWORMING RESULTS IN IMPROVED EDUCATION, HEALTH, AND LONG-TERM WELL-BEING FOR TREATED CHILDREN. (Less)
Spent in most recent FY
Percent of program expenses
DISPENSERS FOR SAFE WATER PROGRAM: CHLORINE DISPENSERS ARE AN INNOVATIVE, LOW-COST APPROACH PROVEN TO INCREASE RATES OF HOUSEHOLD CHLORINATION OF DRINKING WATER IN RURAL AREAS OF SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA. C ... (More)
DISPENSERS FOR SAFE WATER PROGRAM: CHLORINE DISPENSERS ARE AN INNOVATIVE, LOW-COST APPROACH PROVEN TO INCREASE RATES OF HOUSEHOLD CHLORINATION OF DRINKING WATER IN RURAL AREAS OF SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA. CHLORINE DISINFECTS DRINKING WATER WHILE PROTECTING IT FR (Less)
Spent in most recent FY
Percent of program expenses
EVIDENCE ACTION BETA/ACCELERATOR: FOLLOWING A STRATEGIC REVIEW IN 2019, EVIDENCE ACTION BETA WAS RECONSTITUTED AS EVIDENCE ACTION ACCELERATOR WITH A NEW AREA OF FOCUS. CERTAIN ONGOING BETA PROJECTS TH ... (More)
EVIDENCE ACTION BETA/ACCELERATOR: FOLLOWING A STRATEGIC REVIEW IN 2019, EVIDENCE ACTION BETA WAS RECONSTITUTED AS EVIDENCE ACTION ACCELERATOR WITH A NEW AREA OF FOCUS. CERTAIN ONGOING BETA PROJECTS THAT MET ITS NEW FOCUES AREA WERE ABSORBED WITHIN ACCELERA (Less)
Evidence Action Inc. has earned a 95% for the Culture & Community beacon. See the metrics below for more information.
This beacon provides an assessment of the organization's culture and connectedness to the community it serves.
Learn more
30% of beacon score
This organization reported that it is collecting feedback from the constituents and/or communities it serves. Charity Navigator believes nonprofit organizations that engage in inclusive practices, such as collecting feedback from the people and communities they serve, may be more effective.
Who are the people you serve with your mission? Describe briefly.
Our programs are dedicated to improving the lives of millions of vulnerable people across Africa and Asia. Our Dispensers for Safe Water program provides safe water access to over 4 million people in rural Kenya, Uganda, and Malawi who are often beyond the reach of existing infrastructure. Since 2014, our Deworm the World Initiative has helped governments deliver over 1.3 total deworming treatments to children at risk of intestinal worm infection in six countries. Our Iron and Folic Acid (IFA) supplementation program helps the government of India deliver a treatment to prevent iron deficiency anemia to over 13 million children and adolescents since 2019. Since 2021, we have helped the government of Liberia improve the quality of prenatal care for women at risk for maternal syphilis.
How is your organization collecting feedback from the people you serve?
Electronic surveys (by email, tablet, etc.), Focus groups or interviews (by phone or in person), Paper surveys, Case management notes, Community meetings or town halls
How is your organization using feedback from the people you serve?
To identify and remedy poor client service experiences, To identify bright spots and enhance positive service experiences, To make fundamental changes to our programs and/or operations, To inform the development of new programs/projects, To strengthen relationships with the people we serve
With whom does your organization share the feedback you got from the people you serve?
Our staff, Our community partners
How has asking for feedback from the people you serve changed your relationship with them or shifted power - over decisions, resources, rules or in other ways - to them?
Our Dispensers for Safe Water program teams periodically collect feedback from the communities we serve to measure the performance of the program and to determine if we should conduct any corrective measures. A recent example was a trial intervention we implemented to improve the morale and engagement of our community-elected volunteers. From feedback received, we learned that over the years many of them forget their training and get demotivated. As a result, we tested periodic refresher training programs with small incentives, like program-branded t-shirts. The feedback was positive, with significant improvements in performance and morale among the volunteers.
What challenges does your organization face in collecting feedback from the people you serve?
It is difficult to get honest feedback from our clients
Briefly describe a recent change that your organization made in response to feedback from the people you serve.
Our program teams take steps to understand the feedback we receive from those we serve in order to make adjustments that will enhance the effectiveness of our delivery. For example, in our Dispensers for Safe Water program, teams plan community meetings with residents and volunteers, providing a forum to address questions that arise as people learn to use dispensers. Our teams organize such meetings in response to feedback indicating the need to review steps for proper dispenser use, to address questions about chlorine safety or reports of misinformation, as well as questions about choosing when to chlorinate water and for what purposes. Over time, this responsiveness has helped us to improve adoption rates and also evolve the design of our dispensers for more intuitive and durable use.
70% of beacon score
This organization's score of 93 is a passing score. The organization reported that it is implementing 8 Equity Practices. Charity Navigator believes nonprofit organizations implementing effective equity policies and practices can enhance a nonprofit's decision-making, staff motivation, innovation, and effectiveness.
Equity Practices (3/7) | |
---|---|
We review compensation data across the organization (and by staff levels) to identify disparities by race. | |
We ask team members to identify racial disparities in their programs and/or portfolios. | |
We analyze disaggregated data and root causes of race disparities that impact the organization/'s programs, portfolios, and the populations served. | |
We disaggregate data to adjust programming goals to keep pace with changing needs of the communities we support. | |
We employ non-traditional ways of gathering feedback on programs and trainings, which may include interviews, roundtables, and external reviews with/by community stakeholders. | |
We disaggregate data by demographics, including race, in every policy and program measured | |
We have long-term strategic plans and measurable goals for creating a culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization. |
Equity Policies and Procedures (5/7) | |
---|---|
We use a vetting process to identify vendors and partners that share our commitment to race equity. | |
We have a promotion process that anticipates and mitigates implicit and explicit biases about people of color serving in leadership positions. | |
We seek individuals from various race backgrounds for board and executive director/CEO positions within our organization. | |
We have community representation at the board level, either on the board itself or through a community advisory board. | |
We help senior leadership understand how to be inclusive leaders with learning approaches that emphasize reflection, iteration, and adaptability. | |
We measure and then disaggregate job satisfaction and retention data by race, function, level, and/or team. | |
We engage everyone, from the board to staff levels of the organization, in race equity work and ensure that individuals understand their roles in creating culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization. |
Evidence Action Inc. has earned a 100% for the Leadership & Adaptability beacon. See the metrics below for more information.
This beacon provides an assessment of the organization's leadership capacity, strategic thinking and planning, and ability to innovate or respond to changes in constituent demand/need or other relevant social and economic conditions to achieve the organization's mission.
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The nonprofit organization presents evidence of strategic thinking through articulating the organization's mission
Evidence Action aims to be a world leader in scaling evidence-based and cost-effective programs to reduce the burden of poverty.
The nonprofit organization presents evidence of strategic thinking through articulating the organization’s vision.
Evidence Action is building a world where hundreds of millions of people in the poorest places have better opportunities and their lives are measurably improved.
Source: Nonprofit submitted responses
The nonprofit organization presents evidence of strategic thinking and goal setting through sharing their most important strategic goals.
Goal One: Deworm the World: Help governments eliminate intestinal worms as a public health problem among children, and as a result, improving their health, access to education, and livelihoods potential.
Goal Type: Grow, expand, scale or increase access to the existing programs and services.
Goal Two: Dispensers for Safe Water: Deliver free and reliable safe water access to rural communities, reducing diarrheal disease and improving and saving the lives of children under 5.
Goal Type: Grow, expand, scale or increase access to the existing programs and services.
Goal Three: Accelerator: Identify evidence-based interventions with high potential for cost-effective impact and scale those that can measurably improve lives through robust delivery models.
Goal Type: Grow, expand, scale or increase access to the existing programs and services.
The nonprofit provides evidence of investment in leadership development
Evidence Action invests in leadership development opportunities across levels for its staff. Our US-based staff has access to leadership development courses through an external organization called The Management Center, based in Washington DC, and our HR team is researching other local training programs for our employees in the other countries we operate. All US-based staff are encouraged to take a training course called “Working for Change” which helps people define and “own” their workflows, and those in a managerial position receive an additional course in project management and effective leadership. We hold regular meetings for global and regional management teams that discuss key elements of leadership and contribute to skill building.
The nonprofit provides evidence of leadership through focusing externally and mobilizing resources for the mission.
Strategic Partnerships
Networks of Collective Impact Efforts
Thought Leadership
Raising Awareness
Community Building
Evidence Action’s work is inherently tied to the work of our partners. All of our programs operate in close coordination with national and sub-national governments, either through our role as a technical assistance partner or through direct implementation. In addition, our programs are built on strong community networks, including teachers who are trained to deliver deworming medication to children at school, and community volunteers who educate communities about the importance of using dispensers to ensure their water is safe to drink. We also regularly engage with research institutions to assess the performance and impact of our programs; work closely with other NGOs to advocate for policy interventions; and collaborate with private institutions to increase the impact of our programs. We are committed to sharing and helping others replicate how we translate research and evidence into at-scale impact, by participating in communities of practice, strategic events, and conferences.
The nonprofit has an opportunity to tell the story of how the organization adapted to tremendous external changes in the last year.
During the pandemic, Evidence Action was able to continue program operations and provide additional support to the communities we serve. By leveraging existing resources and relationships, we adapted our program delivery to enable the continuation of high-impact and cost-effective interventions in geographies where such programming is essential for maintaining the health of populations. Our Dispensers for Safe Water program adapted its model to ensure communities had continued access to safe water. In mid-2020, we undertook an emergency response to distribute soap, disinfectant, and hygiene education materials to +67,000 communities with the help of our community-elected volunteers we call promoters. Following initial COVID disruptions, by Oct. 2020 we repaired or replaced +5,000 dispensers and delivered approximately 500,000 liters of chlorine, keeping 27,000 dispensers stocked to provide safe water through Jan. 2021 before returning to normal operations. Our Deworm the World Initiative has worked to support governments in adapting school-based deworming programs in the midst of school closures. In Pakistan, we are working with provincial governments to conduct a new round of deworming treatments beginning July 2021. Following school closures in Kenya, we helped the government restart school-based deworming in early 2021, and successfully prototyped a new method to validate deworming coverage while maintaining social distancing. In Nigeria, we helped the government safely launch a new deworming program in Lagos in May 2021 and are working in other states to restart school-based treatment. In India, we helped the government shift school-based deworming and iron and folic acid supplementation programs to community-based delivery, providing children with continued access to treatment at home. We also used our analytics capabilities to support state governments' COVID-19 response with rapid data analysis, communications materials, and patient and contact tracing.
Impact & Results
Accountability & Finance
Culture & Community
Leadership & Adaptability
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