From Cost Data to Policy Decisions: Dioptra at Humanitarian Networks and Partnerships Week 2026
At this year’s Humanitarian Networks and Partnerships Week (HNPW) in March, Dioptra partners came together to make a clear case: in a constrained funding environment, cost evidence is central to how the humanitarian system makes decisions.
Across sessions co-led by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and Mercy Corps, discussions focused on a shared challenge facing the sector: how to translate limited resources into greater reach, stronger outcomes, and more value for money.
A shifting policy context
HNPW 2026 took place against a backdrop of tightening humanitarian budgets and increasing scrutiny from donors. Across contexts, organizations are both grappling with funding cuts and seeking to demonstrate, more rigorously than ever, how each dollar translates into impact.
This creates a growing policy window for cost-effectiveness and value-for-money approaches, with donors and implementing agencies alike seeking more actionable evidence to guide allocation decisions.
Dioptra’s engagement at HNPW was grounded in this reality: cost evidence is about more than measurement. It is about enabling better choices at every level of the system, from program design to donor strategy.
Moving beyond averages: what cost data reveals in practice
A central contribution to the discussions came from Mercy Corps, which shared findings from its recent Value for Money Digest examining multi-purpose cash assistance in Sudan.
The analysis surfaced several insights that challenge how humanitarian programs are typically designed and funded:
Cost-efficiency is often constrained by funding, not delivery capacity. In one program, scaling analysis showed that with additional resources (for larger cash transfers), teams could have reached 5,500 more households at 21% greater cost-efficiency, without increasing staffing. The bottleneck was budget allocation.
Cash adequacy matters as much as coverage. Using national average expenditure benchmarks can systematically under-serve households in high-cost areas. Delivering insufficient transfers may expand reach on paper, but undermines real outcomes.
Integrated programming can drive cost-effectiveness. In some instances, cash alone can be insufficient to prevent negative coping strategies or support recovery. Pairing cash with complementary interventions, such as market support, increases costs – but it can sometimes provide more impact per dollar than standalone cash transfers.
System-level efficiencies remain underexploited. Joint procurement approaches, such as consortium-wide negotiations with financial service providers, could reduce transaction costs at scale.
Operational clarity affects both cost and outcomes. Communication gaps—such as unclear timelines for cash distributions—can create inefficiencies, including duplicate registration and increased administrative burden.
These findings reinforce a broader point: cost-efficiency is not simply about reducing costs. It is about aligning resources, design choices, and delivery models to maximize impact.
Dioptra’s role: connecting data to decisions
By linking financial inputs to program activities and outcomes, Dioptra helps organizations move beyond siloed budgeting and monitoring systems, toward a more integrated understanding of cost-efficiency.
This allows teams to:
Identify cost drivers at a granular level
Compare delivery models across contexts
Understand potential trade-offs between coverage, quality, and cost
Feed evidence directly into program design and donor engagement
Importantly, this includes forward-looking analysis. Cost evidence is increasingly being used in real time—to inform proposal development, guide scale-up decisions, and shape policy conversations.
From technical tool to sector-wide practice
A consistent theme throughout the week was that the humanitarian sector does not lack data—it lacks consistent use of cost evidence in decision-making.
Dioptra’s consortium model aims to address this gap by building a shared evidence base across organizations and creating incentives for uptake. Today, partners are not only using cost data internally, but also contributing to a growing body of comparative evidence that can inform donor strategies and system-level reforms.
This aligns with a broader shift discussed at HNPW: moving from isolated efficiency gains within organizations to coordinated, sector-wide improvements in how resources are allocated.
Looking ahead
As funding constraints deepen, the humanitarian system will increasingly be judged not just on what it delivers, but on how effectively it uses resources to deliver it.
Cost evidence will play a central role in that transition.
Through continued collaboration across the Dioptra consortium, we are helping to embed cost-efficiency into the core of humanitarian practice—turning data into decisions, and decisions into greater impact.