Results for Development (R4D) was founded in 2008 by former World Bank Vice President David de Ferranti, alongside Gina Lagomarsino (who became R4D’s CEO in 2016) and others, with a mission to transform knowledge into action to improve the lives of people around the world.
R4D incubated at the Brookings Institution and launched as a new kind of organization that could work at the nexus of thinking and doing — with skill not just in developing promising, evidence-based ideas, but in the arduous art of applying them in practice.
With no initial starter funding, our first R4Ders had to be resourceful, seeking challenging projects and delivering results quickly. We continue to work with these ideals of creativity and tenacity to achieve results.
R4D’s early projects focused on health and governance with funding from foundations like Rockefeller and Hewlett. But as we built our track record for combining world-class technical expertise, strong partner engagement and practical ideas, our portfolio grew.
Within three years, R4D had secured over $40 million in funding and the team had grown to more than 30 people. In health, we played a leading role getting Universal Health Coverage on the global agenda. We also launched our education program. We built relationships with new funding partners, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which would become our largest source of funding.
In 2017, R4D debuted a new organizational mission designed to bring greater focus and impact to our work. While staying true to our founding commitment to transforming knowledge into action, this evolution placed local change agents at the heart of all R4D initiatives, emphasizing their role in strengthening health, education and nutrition systems. As we began to live this new mission, we asked ourselves a key question: What are the right roles for international NGOs when our ultimate goal is strong local leaders and institutions?
Through in-depth engagement with country leaders and other partners, we heard a need for greater support in designing and facilitating complex country-led change processes — including diagnosing the root causes of the challenges, co-creating and implementing solutions built on evidence and diverse stakeholder input, and continuous learning to test, iterate, and adapt solutions. This resulted in a new strategy launched in 2021 that articulated how we partner with leaders who are driving systems change. To implement this strategy, R4D augmented its strong technical expertise with more capacity to coach local leaders, facilitate local decision-making processes, and connect practitioners with peers around the world for shared learning.
In 2023, we celebrated 15 years of Results for Development and took the opportunity to further refine our strategy and approaches with a greater emphasis on becoming a locally rooted, globally connected organization. This required transforming our internal structures, systems, staffing, culture and geographic reach.
From our roots as a small, mostly D.C.-based organization, R4D now has teams in eight countries (Ethiopia, Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, U.K. and U.S.), 150 staff, a global network of fellows and dozens of government and local NGO partners around the world, and a diversified group of more than 25 funders (foundations, bilaterals, multilaterals and philanthropists). We are truly an international organization that plays the role of connector, facilitator, coach and learning partner across countries, regions and the globe.
And we continually ask ourselves: How can we pioneer — alongside our partners — new ways to support country leaders to navigate the complex challenges they face?
