CLA Evidence Collection
Building the Case for Collaborating, Learning and Adapting
For knowledge and learning specialists in international development, questions about what works within this practice area and what evidence might exist to support claims of effectiveness are common. To answer these questions for ourselves and others, the Office of Learning, Evaluation and Research in what was previously USAID’s Bureau for Policy, Planning and Learning (PPL/LER) conducted a learning agenda to systematically address:
- Does an intentional, systematic and resourced approach to collaborating, learning, and adapting contribute to development outcomes?
- If so, how? And under what conditions?
The CLA Evidence Collection in this section starts to fill the evidence gaps and synthesize existing evidence from a wide range of disciplines around the practices and approaches associated with collaborating, learning and adapting.
Evidence Base for CLA (EB4CLA)
Research on the impact of strategic collaboration, organizational learning and adaptive management approaches to international development is relatively scarce, scattered and disparate. Between 2015-2020, USAID, along with its partners, embarked on a formal evidence gathering and analysis effort, which included several complementary lines of inquiry:
- CLA Literature Review: During the active period, the literature review was updated semi-annually.
- CLA Case Competition Analysis: A review of cases from the CLA Case Competition to analyze how the CLA approaches have contributed to organizational effectiveness and improved development results.
- Learning Network of Implementing Partners: USAID/PPL and USAID/E3/localworks, the LEARN contract, and the Knowledge-Driven Agricultural Development contract convened and facilitated a learning network aimed at developing methods to measure CLA’s contribution to organizational effectiveness and development results. Launched in November 2016, the learning network included five grantees, whose learning is synthesized and shared via USAID Learning Lab.
- USAID Learning Dojo: USAID/PPL and LEARN collaborated with other operating units at USAID, including the Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance Center, localworks, the Office of Forestry and Biodiversity, and the Global Development Lab to address learning questions and leverage the knowledge each operating unit brings to bear about effective CLA and its contributions to development outcomes.
- Additional studies: These studies employ a range of methods, including evidence reviews, case studies, theories of change analysis, and contribution analysis, to answer the question of whether an intentional, systematic, and resourced approach to CLA contributes to development outcomes.
- CLA Case Analysis Deep Dive: Zambia's Community-Led Total Sanitation Program
- CLA Case Analysis Deep Dive: Global Communities’ Ebola Response in Liberia
- Analysis of secondary data from the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS)
- CLA Fosters Local Ownership and, Ultimately, Better Results: A Review of the Evidence
- Summary of the Evidence: Collaborating, Learning and Adapting's Contribution to Improving Organizational Effectiveness
- KM4Dev Journal: How USAID is building the evidence base for knowledge management and organizational learning
For example, evidence tells us that:
Browse Full Evidence Collection
Click on one of the six components of the CLA Framework below to view a summary of the evidence and a list of all of the articles and studies we’ve compiled on that topic. There, you can filter by more specific CLA approaches.
Contribute to the Evidence Collection
Maintaining and expanding the value and relevance of this evidence collection is a community-wide effort! Some key learning questions that still remain include (among others): what do we understand about resourcing CLA collaborating, learning and adapting?, and how can we measure CLA’s contributions, both at the level of individual activities and especially in the aggregate? If you have evidence or analysis that surfaces learning on how collaborating, learning and adapting contributes to organizational effectiveness and/or development results, please submit your content Learning Lab!