Does Facilitation Matter?: Spark’s experience designing and testing “lean” facilitation approaches
As governments, donors, and implementing organizations seek more cost-effective ways to deliver impact, there is growing interest in identifying the core components of interventions that allow for development programs to deliver meaningful change while minimizing costs. Within the community-driven development (CDD) space, facilitation (which refers to virtually any support provided to communities beyond the provision of direct transfers) is widely considered a core component of most programs. Facilitation investments vary across programs—ranging from less than 25 cents to 63 cents per every dollar spent on community grants [Casey, 2018]—yet there is surprisingly little evidence about how much they influence outcomes.
As Spark’s approach is predicated on nearly two years of facilitation, we are well-positioned to test how the variation in facilitation intensity affects outcomes. In January 2026, Spark launched a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to answer one of the most consequential open questions in community-driven development: what are the social and economic gains from adding facilitation to village grants? The study is designed to compare our standard village grant and planning model, which comes with nearly two years of facilitation, against a village grant with “lean” facilitation, alongside a pure control condition. In preparation for the RCT, we piloted two potential versions of the “lean” facilitation approach with our implementing partners, Shaping Our Future Foundation and Njira Impact.
We had several important learnings from the pilot [see full report here], but two were particularly salient for the design and justification for the RCT.
First, to preserve the core principles of community-driven development—where communities both manage and benefit from village funds—we needed to strengthen program communication and financial safeguards. Focus group discussions revealed that there was confusion about the fund’s purpose and criteria, and raised some concerns about the risk of financial mismanagement. In response to these findings, we have standardized and clarified program communication and established stronger financial safeguards for both arms of the RCT.
"The introduction was not very clear to most people. Since there was no follow-up facilitation, many of us didn't fully understand what was expected from the project or how the funds should be managed.” - FGD Participant
“The issue I’ve noticed is that as a group we chose people who will be going to do the transactions at the bank but these people were privately replaced by our leaders which isn’t sitting well with me.” - FGD Participant
Second, communities demonstrated strong ownership throughout the pilot; focus group participants consistently reported ways in which they came together to organize themselves, developed governance structures, and sought out technical assistance.
“We had initially planned to source the goods from suppliers near our village…we conducted a market survey to gather price quotations from various suppliers. This enabled us to create a comprehensive budget and make informed decisions about our expenditures.” - FGD Participant
"What stood out is that we were given the chance to choose the development that we want after sitting down as a community, which government or other non-governmental organizations do not give; they just choose developments for us whether they are good or bad.” - FGD participant
At the same time, participants highlighted the need for additional support. The degree to which providing that assistance leads to differences in process and longer-term outcomes is precisely what the RCT seeks to answer.
Overall, the pilot was critical in shaping the design of the second research arm and reinforced the value of research that examines the incremental impact of facilitation over and above village grants. With these refinements in place, the randomized controlled trial is underway and will generate rigorous evidence on one of the field's key unanswered questions: what additional value does facilitation provide beyond village grants alone? We look forward to sharing findings as the study progresses.
For a more in-depth discussion of our experience and learnings, you can read the full write-up here.