Aid is designed and allocated by people, and people are subject to the same biases that shape any other decision. Funding follows what is recent and vivid rather than what the evidence supports. And even well-directed money can fail at the last mile, where a vaccine goes unused or a benefit goes unclaimed.
Drawing on work by four GBEND members, J-PAL, the Global Innovation Fund, BIT, and the Behavioral Science Group, this paper sets out six principles for making aid work better, spanning the full pathway from evidence to delivery to finance. It grew out of a convening during the World Government Summit in Dubai in February 2026.
Authors
J-PAL
- Iqbal Dhaliwal
- Nour Shammout
- Katie Chen
Global Innovation Fund
- Joseph Ssentongo
- Shailaja Annamraju
BIT
- Mónica Wills-Silva
- Antonio Hanna-Amodio
- Zain Hussain
Behavioral Science Group
- Rasha Attar
- Chiara Cappellini
