Precision Development (PxD) — Bridge Grant (September 2022) and Core Operations Grant (March 2023)

Note: This page summarizes the rationale behind two GiveWell grants to Precision Development (PxD). PxD staff reviewed this page prior to publication.

Published: August 2023

In September 2022, GiveWell made a $286,709 bridge grant to Precision Development (PxD) to cover five months of staff time to complete scoping work that GiveWell originally supported in March 2022. The March 2022 grant provided funding for PxD to scope and plan potential impact evaluations of its mobile agricultural advice program. The September 2022 grant allowed PxD to cover staff costs while it completed scoping work and drafted evaluation proposals, and it mitigated the gap in staff pay between scoping work and potential launch of a program and evaluation.

In March 2023, we decided not to recommend funding for implementation and impact evaluations that PxD proposed after its scoping work. Also in March 2023, we made a one-year, $700,000 grant to support PxD’s operations and core staff. This grant will allow PxD to continue to iterate on its evaluation plans, as well as to fundraise to other donors for this evaluation opportunity and its other programs.

We are making this grant a) to allow the possibility for PxD to find other sources of funding to support this program and b) in keeping with our typical practice of providing limited supportive funding to organizations we’ve previously funded. In general, we believe it is a good practice to offer this type of grant, in order to:

• Enable organizations we have supported to seek out other sources of funding.
• Reduce potential harms to the staff, partners, and program beneficiaries of organizations that we have supported which might result from a sudden stop of activities.
• Act as a responsible funder.

GiveWell spoke with staff from Precision Development on September 26, 2023, about updates on the March 2023 grant.