DAI CDI Final Report — 4

Global Development Lab awarded a Professional Management Consulting services contract to DAI in September 2014. The four-year contract aimed to promote innovative programming within the agency by harnessing the best in American and global innovation and entrepreneurship. DAI provided support to 24 Operating Units across the agency, including every center within the Lab and 19 USAID Missions around the world. DAI assembled a team of 16 full-time staff, 63 vendors, and 86 technical experts to support a broad range of technical services for teams and initiatives across the Lab. The team delivered over $24 million in project implementation through 50 buy-ins, which included communications services, acceleration support, and innovation program and design support. DAI worked on a wide range of platforms, including the development of the Global Innovation Exchange and DIV's Salesforce platform. The CDI-client experience and trust between USAID and DAI allowed for more experimental and heterodox approaches. The team followed the Lab as they shifted from more insular experiments to co-programming and adopting a more consultative relationship with USAID Missions and operating units. DAI learned valuable lessons to simplify language, connect it to private sector engagement goals, and use trusted local firms or consultants. Over the last four years, DAI worked hand-in-hand with USAID to promote strategic communications and outreach, capacity building, and international communications for USAID's Missions and Bureaus, as well as individual grantees. The DAI communications team expanded and adapted to fit USAID's evolving needs and capacity. The team ran communications campaigns promoting open calls for solutions and announcing competition winners, involving influencer mapping, email blasts, social media, webinars, in-person events, and press outreach. DAI's level of effort varied based on USAID's needs, and the team worked closely with USAID to plan these campaigns. In some cases, DAI took a leading role in communications, including managing social media handles, sending email blasts, and conducting influencer mapping. In other cases, DAI provided more limited support, focusing on influencer mapping, personalized outreach, and development of social media toolkits and graphics. Throughout the CDI project, DAI delivered a wide range of activities, including running communications campaigns, promoting winning innovations, connecting entrepreneurs with partners and investors, and sharing innovators' work to a wider audience. The team's flexibility and ability to adapt to changing needs allowed for a high level of collaboration and innovation between USAID and DAI. The CDI contract has been marked by a focus on learning alongside USAID and collaboratively remixing this hard-won experience into subsequent activities. Whether in communications, operational innovation, acceleration, open innovation, and program design activities, platforms, or learning, DAI has worked to capture and document project learning and replicate activities that showed impact. Over the course of the four years, DAI has developed a robust learning capture agenda, resulting in five toolkits, six trainings, and 21 learning products. The team has also worked to transition activities to new project teams, ensuring the sustainability of programming after the Mission and Lab ended the engagement.