NextBillion - A WDI Publication

Every year, development organisations and social enterprises invest in programmes and products designed to help people build more secure lives. Women receive vocational training, young people learn new skills, entrepreneurs receive business support, and low-income households gain access to assets, finance, products and services. At the end of a programme, organisations can report clear results: people trained, businesses started, assets distributed, customers reached and incomes increased.

But these numbers do not always tell us whether the change will last.

I have experienced this reality through my work as the Coordinator of the ECO Wheels Project at Shishu Mandir, a non-profit organisation in Bengaluru, India, founded by German doctor Hella Mundhra, that runs a free English-medium school for children from economically disadvantaged families, and operates a registered adoption centre and children’s home, childcare centres, a vocational training centre for young people, and higher education and community welfare programmes.

Eco Wheels is one of the organisation’s major livelihood programmes. It trains underprivileged women to drive both cars and electric auto-rickshaws (e-autos) and helps them access e-autos so they can become entrepreneurs and earn their own livelihoods. Today, 266 e-autos are operating in Bengaluru through the initiative. But the training and the vehicle are not the end of the intervention. In many ways, they are the beginning. Once a woman receives an e-auto and starts working, she has to deal with the realities of running a business to earn her livelihood, and this is where continued support becomes important.

The experience has made me question whether we sometimes measure social impact too early.

The Gap Between Delivery and Lasting Change

Development organisations have become good at designing programmes with clear targets and measurable outputs. Donors need evidence that resources are being used well. Governments need measurable results. Organisations need targets to manage their work. So measurement is essential. The problem begins when what is easiest to measure becomes what we value most. We can count how many people completed training. It is harder to know how many are still using those skills a year later. We can count businesses started, but it takes more time to understand how many remain active and profitable. We can record the number of assets distributed, but the more important question is whether those assets helped people build more stable incomes.

The same issue exists for enterprises serving low-income customers. A business can measure how many products it sold, customers it acquired or services it delivered. But adoption or sales alone do not necessarily tell us whether the customer actually used the product and benefited from it.

As a result, there’s a key question that must be asked after delivery, which is relevant to both development programmes and market-based enterprises: What happens next?

People’s lives do not follow project timelines. A six-month training programme may end, but establishing a livelihood may take much longer. A new entrepreneur may discover that the market is different from what she expected. A woman entering paid work may face resistance from her family, or experience an unexpected financial crisis that can undo months of progress. These challenges do not necessarily mean that an intervention failed: They simply show that it is only one part of a much longer journey.

Balancing the Tension Between Support and Scale

We already know that support needs to go beyond one intervention — the development sector has recognised this for years. The Graduation Approach, developed by BRAC and adapted by organisations working in different countries, aims to address this reality by combining several forms of support, including livelihood assets, savings, financial services, training and coaching. The approach recognises that people experiencing poverty may face several constraints at the same time, and may need different forms of support in sequence. Coaching can be particularly important because it provides support while people are trying to turn an opportunity into a livelihood.

But there is an important tension here: The more individual and intensive the support, the more difficult and expensive it can become to deliver at scale.

I do not think the answer is to choose between scale and care. Nor am I arguing that every development organisation or social enterprise should replicate a full Graduation programme or provide intensive support for years. The more practical lesson is to think about the right level of support at the right stage. A person may need intensive support when starting out, practical guidance while building a livelihood, and much lighter contact once she becomes more confident. So the organisation’s role should change as the person’s capacity grows. The objective should not be to simply make every programme longer. Instead, organisations should strive to provide support that is responsive to what people actually need to achieve the intended outcome.

The Concept of Deep Care

I use the term “Deep Care” to describe this way of thinking. I do not claim that providing ongoing follow-up is an entirely new idea, as development practitioners have incorporated accompaniment, mentoring, coaching and community support into their programming for many years. What I am trying to highlight through the concept of Deep Care is a simple question: Are we designing programmes around the life of the project, or around the journey of the person?

Conventional programmes tend to follow a similar pattern: Recognise a need, address it through a service, establish and achieve a certain target, then exit. Deep Care asks organisations to think about what happens between the moment a person first receives an intervention and the moment they reach the point where they no longer need it.

The organisation can bring beneficiaries to this point by building trust, providing appropriate support, helping people respond to setbacks, connecting them with opportunities and gradually reducing direct assistance as their capacity grows. The purpose of this continued support should ultimately be to make continued support less necessary.

My experience with the Eco Wheels Project and Shishu Mandir has reinforced this idea for me. When a woman is trained to drive and receives an e-auto, it is tempting to see the completion of the training and the transfer of the asset as the measurable end of the programme. But from her perspective, that is the point at which another journey begins.

She now has an asset that can generate income, but she also has the responsibility of turning that asset into a sustainable livelihood. She has to operate in a real market, deal with customers and expenses, manage income, and respond to problems that cannot be anticipated in a training room. Our role is therefore not simply to provide the vehicle and walk away. Instead, we continue to handhold the women as they establish themselves as entrepreneurs. As their confidence and experience grow, the nature and intensity of the support we provide can be reduced. This is the distinction that’s important to acknowledge when we talk about long-term support: Care should not mean dependency — it should build independence.

The Relevance of Deep Care for Businesses

The Deep Care principle also has relevance beyond nonprofit programmes. Businesses serving low-income and emerging market customers often operate in environments where adoption can be difficult. A customer may purchase a product but lack the knowledge, confidence, finance, market access or support needed to use it successfully.

However, for an enterprise, thinking beyond the transaction does not necessarily mean providing open-ended assistance. It can mean designing better customer journeys. For instance, a financial services company might ask whether customers are successfully using an account rather than simply opening one. A company selling agricultural products might look beyond the sale to determine whether farmers are actually able to use the product to improve productivity. A training enterprise might measure not only completion of a course, but whether trainees find and retain employment afterwards.

These questions can also have a business rationale. Customers who successfully adopt and benefit from a product are more likely to continue using it, recommend it, and engage with additional products or services from the same company. In this sense, customer success and social impact do not have to be competing objectives. For enterprises serving emerging markets, creating lasting value for the customer can also create lasting value for the business.

The Implications of Deep Care for Measurement

This longer-term mentality changes the questions we ask after an intervention or transaction. If a woman receives an asset to start a business, we should not stop at recording the value of the asset and reporting that the business has started. We should ask: Is she finding customers? Can she manage her income? Can she deal with an unexpected expense? Does she know where to obtain additional finance? Is her family supporting her work? What happens if the business does not perform as expected?

The same questions can be adapted for enterprises and other development interventions. Is the customer still using the product? Is the service improving their economic position? Are they able to overcome the initial barriers to adoption? Are they returning because the product creates genuine value?

These questions require a continuing relationship, but that relationship does not have to look the same in every programme or business. For some people, it may mean providing intensive early coaching. For others, it may mean offering periodic check-ins, facilitating access to peer networks or other programmes or institutions, or providing support with digital communication or market linkages. The important thing is to design the relationship around the outcome rather than around the organisational calendar.

This has an important implication for measurement. We should continue measuring outputs like how many people were trained, how many businesses were started, or how many products were distributed. But we should also measure what happens afterwards. Are people still using the skills they learned after 12 months? Are the businesses they launched still operating? Has their income become more stable? Have customers continued using the product or service?

These measures require time and resources. But they tell us whether an intervention or product created lasting value. That also means follow-up cannot always be treated as an optional activity added when funding permits. If long-term outcomes matter, then the resources required to understand those outcomes should be built into the budget when the programme or business model is designed.

Rethinking What a Successful Exit Means

Deep Care ultimately asks us to rethink what constitutes a successful exit. For a development organisation, a successful exit should not simply mean that the organisation has completed its activities. It should mean that people have developed enough skills, confidence, resources and connections to continue moving forward with less direct support. For an enterprise, success should not necessarily end with a completed transaction. It should also include understanding whether the product or service has created sustained value for the customer.

This does not mean that organisations must maintain intensive relationships forever. Follow-up can become lighter. Peer networks can take over some functions. Former participants can become mentors. Local institutions can provide services. Technology can maintain lower-cost forms of contact. Businesses can build customer-support and engagement systems that are appropriate to their market. The aim is not to extend every programme indefinitely, but rather to recognise that the period after delivery is part of the outcome.

Ultimately, we need to recognise that people rarely build secure livelihoods through one intervention or one transaction. A project can open a door. Training can provide a skill. Finance can create an opportunity. An asset can help someone get started. And a business can provide a product that solves a real problem. But what happens after that opportunity is created may determine whether the change lasts.

John Kennedy Philip is the Coordinator of the ECO Wheels Project at Shishu Mandir.

Photo credit: AUNG MYO HTWE