Impact case study database

1. AAT/DEL convenes more than 150 development organisations in France, Germany, the UK, and the US, enabling NGOs to collaborate on and build public support for development.

Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Aid Attitudes Tracker and Development Engagement Lab had two primary tasks: (1) to produce world-leading research on public engagement with global development; (2) to build a research-partner network in four donor countries to enable development organisations to use evidence in their campaigns, advocacy and communications. The success of the AAT led to DEL, with around seven times more funding (see i & ii above). AAT/DEL works with partner organisations in the four countries to identify the key questions organisations face, design analyses to answer these questions, and disseminate the research. In three main ways, AAT/DEL has thereby transformed the development sector in France, Germany, the UK and the US, as well as other OECD countries.

First, AAT/DEL convenes meetings in the four countries three times per year to share key research and insights with partners (e.g. Oxfam, Water Aid, Interaction, ONE, Global Citizen, Save the Children, Welthungerhilfe, UN Foundation). It employs country-specific development/communications consultants to help organisations take up insights and improve the feedback loop.

Second, the project provides research and insights beyond its core partners through bespoke presentations to organisations (e.g. US Global Leadership Coalition, Agence Française de Développement, UK Labour Shadow International Development Team, Global Affairs Canada, European Commission’s Directorate-General for International Cooperation and Development, and the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development). Through partnership with Bond, the UK network for international development organisations, AAT/DEL has provided presentations/webinars and reports reaching over 400 NGOs [A¹/A²]. In France, AAT/DEL research supports Focus 2030’s International Development Barometer [A³]. As noted by the Head of Performance and Insight at Water Aid, AAT/DEL ‘produce[s] a large number of resources/outputs to support development organisations; the new website provides access to blogs, data, and reports, as well as bespoke slide decks for partners in each of the four countries…. We feel incredibly lucky to have access to such an amazing resource’ [B].

Third, AAT/DEL provides the foundation of research, data and outputs for the Development Compass website [A⁴], an open-source portal for data, publications, and insights, developed with the OECD Development Communication Network (DevCom). AAT/DEL research has underpinned a wide range of policy reports – for example, by the German Institute for Development Evaluation (DEVal) and the Mercator Dialogue on Asylum and Migration [A⁵] – as well as major pieces in Devex [A⁶] and The Guardian [A⁷].

AAT/DEL research thus provides a coordinating point for the sector that previously did not exist, enabling organisations to think and collaborate to address key challenges. According to Water Aid: ‘the AAT/DEL partner meetings provide a unique forum for informed debate and discussion; this is not a talking shop however, rather a platform for the rigorous examination of key and emerging hypotheses under objective, academic leadership’ [B]. The Director of the UK Campaign to Defend Aid (comprising 25 of the UK’s largest INGOs) notes, ‘the depth of the collaboration that UK NGOs have achieved over the last four years could not have been possible without AAT/DEL’ [C]. Several smaller NGOs note that ‘without AAT research there was nothing comparable to access in terms of data, evidence and rigour, and they would not have the resources to carry out audience segmentation or opinion polling themselves’. [D¹]

2. AAT/DEL research is the definitive data source for the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office’s monitoring and tracking of UK public opinion and has influenced the organisation’s high-level communications and campaigns.

The UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), formerly the Department for International Development (DFID), uses AAT/DEL as the definitive source of data on UK public opinion towards global poverty, providing tracking data for key performance indicators, and enabling an evidence-based approach to its public engagement and communications work. AAT/DEL research has provided insight into public support for Official Development Assistance, highlighting the importance of morality as a foundational driver of support [R1/R6] and the limits of talking about aid volume as a means to build public support [R5]. The Deputy Director, Corporate and Internal Communications (CIC) at the FCDO, writes:

AAT/DEL evidence is embedded in the communications approach of the department. A pillar of the former DFID Communication Division strategy was to showcase how UK aid works, and is making the world a safer, healthier place, and AAT/DEL insight is key to how this is delivered as it underpins a communications approach which explains how aid is being used and is effective. For example, AAT/DEL insight was used as a rationale and as guidance for the campaign ‘100 Ways that Aid Works’ undertaken by DFID on social media in 2019. [E]

AAT/DEL’s specific impacts on DFID/FCDO policy can be illustrated through three examples. First, as championed by the then Secretary of State, DFID ran a six-week pilot communications ‘Aid Works’ campaign in the West Midlands in 2018, to test whether a concerted communications effort can change attitudes towards aid [E]. The campaign targeted the ‘Marginally Engaged’ group identified by AAT/DEL’s segmentation analysis [R1], and drew on AAT/DEL insights on messengers and messages [R2/R3/R4]. One DFID official noted that the AAT segmentation model ‘is at the heart of what we do’ on audience insight [D¹]. A systematic impact evaluation of the campaign showed a 15% increase in people’s understanding of how aid works , compared to no change in the control region. [D²]

Second, AAT/DEL insights on effective messengers have informed a new strategy. The Deputy Director for CIC notes: ‘DFID moved away from relying on ministers and aid recipients to communicate their messages and moved to using volunteers and frontline workers. AAT research showed that pairing Ministers with volunteers or frontline workers was more effective’. The change has ‘improv[ed] the effectiveness of the messages they’re trying to get across’. [E]

Third, AAT/DEL has influenced the allocation of more than GBP120,000,000 through the FCDO’s UK Aid Match Scheme. Aid Match provides grants to UK-based NGOs for poverty reduction projects in developing countries. The fund is open to more than 60 UK-based organisations, and has helped around 23,400,000 people in 37 countries. The FCDO has incorporated AAT/DEL insights into the criteria for receiving Aid Match funding, particularly those on pity-based appeals [R2/R3] and effective messengers [R4]. To illustrate, it is now required that projects ‘choose images or film that show beneficiaries as active, not passive, and portray people as individuals that the viewer can relate to... It is unacceptable to use images that evoke mere pity and helplessness’. [D¹/E]

3. AAT/DEL’s audience segmentation analysis underpins NGOs’ core campaigns strategy, enabling them to target appeals and communications effectively. NGOs use messages and messengers more effectively and with greater impact as a result of AAT/DEL research.

AAT/DEL research has produced actionable insights for development NGOs, transforming their strategies, appeals and impact in four principal ways. First, in 2017 the Gates Foundation, in partnership with Purpose (a campaign consultancy organisation), launched the Global Development Campaign Lab (GDCL) to scope and test campaigning interventions to identify and scale effective ways to activate new audiences and grow support for global development. This ran 10 campaign interventions in Germany, France and the UK, and AAT/DEL research was central to ‘the definition of our campaign hypotheses, the definition of our narrative frames and engagement of messengers, and the definition and prioritization of campaign actions’ [F]. This was reflected in the ‘Project Period’ campaign, launched in the UK to elevate the issue of period poverty to the global level. In designing their interventions focusing on effective messengers, Purpose targeted the use of relatable and audience-appropriate messengers [R4] which were ‘shaped by AAT insights’ [G]. Purpose’s ‘right messenger for the right audience’ approach reached over 2,000,000 people who went on to take higher barrier actions, raising funds or awareness of global period poverty to their own networks. [G]

Second, fearing a collapse in public support and a weakening of political consensus around the UK government’s commitment to spending 0.7% of GNI on overseas aid, in 2017, the UK’s 25 largest development NGOs, accounting for GBP5.6bn (7%) of total UK charity spending annually, created a sector-wide Campaign to Defend Aid and Development. AAT/DEL’s audience segmentation has enabled this group to target its campaigns more effectively [C]. As a member of the Campaign’s steering board notes, AAT/DEL’s analysis is at the heart of the cross-sector theory of change. The [Campaign’s] target audience is defined by an AAT segment [D¹/H]. According to the Campaign’s Director:

Every year since (2018, 2019, 2020 and for 2021), AAT/DEL data has featured in our strategy documents and informed the investment decisions of CEOs donating pooled resources into Campaign funds. Specifically, the segmentation methodology and the ‘Marginally Engaged’ as a concept has become part of the strategy discourse for CEOs and Executive Directors, as well as hands-on staff in Comms, Marketing, Public Affairs and Fundraising Directorates alike. [C]

Third, organisations have moved from using celebrities and aid recipients to communicate their messages towards foregrounding volunteers and frontline workers [R4]. NGOs’ activities around messengers are ‘more rigorous with the influence of AAT's approach than they otherwise would have been’ [D¹]. Organisations have also changed the content of their appeals, moving away from ‘pity-based’ appeals and images and towards sharing more positive, empathetic stories [R2/R3]. The negative impact of pity-based images was long-suspected by many organisations and has now moved ‘from being a hypothesis, to a business consideration’ [D¹]. Plan International, CARE International, and Water Aid have fundamentally changed the design and content of their appeals [D¹]. According to the Head of Performance & Insight at Water Aid, AAT/DEL research has played a significant role in ‘shaping a public communications culture shift at WaterAid’ [B]. He notes: ‘In 2016, we resolved to move away from the traditional, transaction-focused model of public engagement towards an approach that recognises supporters as being “partners in the mission, not just funders of the mission”.’ He continues, ‘the need-focused messaging that everyone was seeing … was obscuring the organisation’s progress narrative, thereby suppressing any sense of hope and limiting an individual’s sense of personal efficacy’. [B]

Fourth, UNICEF has used AAT/DEL’s insights on both audience segmentation and messaging to change the approach of its annual Soccer Aid event, with marked effects on income. Its Strategic Communications lead, notes:

The Soccer Aid appeal films have used the AAT insights to make a conscious shift in tone, and so far they have been working, and they are raising more every year. Soccer Aid donations have increased from GBP6,700,000 in 2018 [the year before they took AAT insights on board] to GBP9,300,000 in 2020, which in part can be attributed to AAT providing evidence that more hopeful, joyful stories deliver the same or greater levels of income. [I]

Importantly, AAT/DEL has ‘helped to move along internal conversations around effectively changing appeal films by providing evidence that previously didn’t exist. Not only has the shift in tone increased the overall amount raised on the night of TV, it has also increased the value of individual donations with more viewers donating the higher price point of £30 than ever before’. [I]