By Susan Davis, Executive Director
The WASH Sustainability Charter was published in 2011. About 100 organizations (including a few donors) endorsed it. We wondered:
- Did it influence how WASH interventions were funded?
- Did this in turn improve the services over time?
There’s not much information to make these connections. In place of evidence, we asked some WASH development organizations their perceptions. This made us curious about the role of funding mechanisms in contributing to sustainable services.
Key Takeaways:
- Most respondents believe the ways donors fund influence sustainability of water, sanitation and hygiene interventions.
- Most respondents think donors are pretty good or okay at funding sustainable WASH services. But we wonder how they know because…
- Monitoring and/or evaluation after programs was reported by 59% of respondents as underfunded.
- Ideally, we could track the results of different types of grants over time. But often, unrestricted and restricted funds are blended to cover the full cost of a program.
You can access the full report here.
Susan Davis 
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