Co-Financing Community-Driven Development Through Informal Taxation: Experimental Evidence from South-Central Somalia

Community contributions are often required as part of community-driven development (CDD) programmes, with payment encouraged through matching grants. However, little remains known about the impact of matching grants, or the implications of requiring community contributions in order for communities to receive development funding. This paper describes research where we partner with two non-governmental organisations (NGOs) – one international and one Somali – and undertake a randomised control trial of a CDD matching grant programme designed to incentivise informal contributions for local public goods in Gedo region in south-central Somalia. We rely on household survey data collected from 1,297 respondents in 31 treatment and 31 control communities, as well as surveys of village leaders and data on informal contributions from the mobile money platform used by community leaders to collect revenue. Two key findings emerge. First, our research shows that working with communities and incentivising informal revenue generation can be an effective way to deliver public goods and to support citizens and communities. Second, building on research exploring the potential for development interventions to spur virtuous or adverse cycles of governance, we show that development partners may work directly with community leaders and informal taxing institutions without necessarily undermining – and indeed perhaps strengthening – state legitimacy and related ongoing processes of statebuilding in the country. Indeed, despite playing no direct role in the matching grant programme, taxpayer perceptions of the legitimacy of the local government improved as a result of the programme. These findings deepen our understanding of how community contributions may be incentivised through matching grant programmes, and how they may contribute to CDD and public goods provision in a context of weak institutional capacity.

“Our arithmetic was unique”: The Sheppard-Towner Act and the Constraints of Federalism on Data Collection Before the New Deal

This article reveals how the politics of federalism in the 1920s stifled the U.S. Children’s Bureau’s ability to collect national data on the workings of the Sheppard-Towner Act. The Bureau staff’s reliance on state administrators for data hindered their efforts to collect standardized national statistics on the states’ use of federal dollars. Ultimately, this barrier contributed to Sheppard-Towner’s defeat in 1929. Though the law was short-lived, the problems the Children’s Bureau encountered administering it provide insights into how federal matching grant programs began to shape federal and state relations before the New Deal. As this article shows, Bureau staff learned from their experience administering Sheppard-Towner that they needed to implement more stringent federal oversight over state-level accounting in their administration of Title V of the Social Security Act.

Is Charitable Giving a Zero-Sum Game? The Effect of Competition Between Charities on Giving Behavior

The competition for donations between charities is tough. Yet, little is known about how giving behavior is affected by competition between charities. Do people have a need to satisfy their demand for giving by contributing to a particular charity? Or can the demand for doing good be satisfied by giving to any organization? In a donation dictator game, I vary competition between charities by (i) altering the set of similar real charities to which subjects can donate and (ii) changing the relative price of giving to a randomly selected charity in the choice set by introducing a matching grant. I find weak substitution between charities when giving to more than one charity is possible, as the donated amounts to individual charities decrease with the size of the choice set. At the same time, aggregate giving to all charities increases when charities are in competition. Intensified competition through an increase in the charitable giving market seems to attract new giving and increases overall public good provision. Price competition, however, does not attract new donations when market size is constant and charities compete for donations. These findings carry important insights for managers of nonprofit organizations and provide information on how to improve existing fundraising strategies. This paper was accepted by Yan Chen, decision analysis.

Provisions for Agricultural Extension Services in the Implementation Manuals of the World Bank Assisted Fadama Development Projects in Nigeria: Gaps and Lessons

The study examined the provisions for agricultural extension services in the National Fadama Development Projects in Nigeria. Provisions for extension services were made by the project in the areas of, input support, local development plans and technical assistance. However, certain critical gaps were observed in the provisions for extension services in the projects’ operational manuals. The observed gaps were in the areas of the improper selection criteria for facilitators and service providers in terms of educational qualification, limited subject matter coverage, poor format for preparing local development plans and lack of incorporation of more innovative extension approaches in project execution, and misuse and application of the concept of advisory services as an alternative to extension services. In spite of the observed gaps, some positive lessons namely; the matching grant arrangement and user fee approach which ensured the sustainability of the project, diversified menu for extension services which was based on the needs of farmers were learnt. Detailed criteria for measuring the quality of extension services rendered to farmers should be developed and included in future implementation manuals. Keywords: Provision of agricultural extension services, fadama implementation manuals.