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Innovations in Partner Learning

Guidance to help USAID partners be active participants in shaping development priorities and investments.

Collaborating with Partners is How USAID Works

Partners are central to the work USAID undertakes to create a safer, healthier, and more democratic and prosperous world for people everywhere. 

USAID works to diversify and strengthen partner engagement, foster locally led development, to lower barriers and improve the capacity of partners to work with USAID—all to multiply the Agency’s development impact around the world.

Tools to Understand USAID’s Approaches to Partnering

USAID is innovating its approaches to engage a greater diversity of partners. The goal is to make design and implementation activities less prescriptive and more collaborative, simplify access for new and locally led partnerships, and increase usage of awards that pay for results. View these resources for a better understanding.

Co-Creation

A design approach where USAID and one or more partners work together to achieve a mutually valued outcome assuming some degree of shared power and decision-making.

Innovative Financing

USAID pays the implementer or recipient for the results they achieve.

Learning and Adapting

Processes that enable USAID partners and staff to learn and pivot in real time based on new information.

Phased Acquisitions

Phased acquisitions are used when USAID anticipates a large competition for a specific procurement and wishes to reduce the number of offers for evaluation.

Private Sector Engagement

Private sector expertise, innovation and resources aligned with USAID goals can create more sustainable outcomes to development challenges.

Interested in Partnering with USAID?

Expand your knowledge about  partner engagement with USAID through these resources.

USAID Awards Strategy

Learn more about USAID efforts to be more innovative and transparent in our approach to solving development challenges with partners.

View A&A Policy

Work with USAID

Visit USAID’s resource hub designed for new, current, and future local and international partners to navigate how to work with USAID.

Visit Partner Hub

Learn More About USAID’s Approaches to Programming

Follow these links to toolkits that provide USAID staff and implementing partners with a curated set of resources to plan, implement and integrate collaborating, learning and adapting (CLA), monitoring, and evaluation practices into organizational processes and development programming.

CLA Toolkit
Monitoring Toolkit
Evaluation Toolkit

Acknowledgements

These resources were developed and aggregated by the Professional Development Training Division in the Management Bureau’s Office of Acquisition and Assistance  (M/OAA/PDT) to help partners, USAID staff, and organizations considering working with USAID, understand the diversity of awards and engagements, processes, and innovations in collaborative development work. Some of the aggregated resources were produced by the Office of Learning, Evaluation and Research in the Bureau of Policy, Planning, and Learning.