Reaching the poor and vulnerable: targeting strategies for social funds and other community-driven programs

Social fund and community-driven development programmes are gaining attention for their capacity to support scaling up efforts to end extreme poverty. This toolkit provides the concepts, empirical evidence, noteworthy case studies and the operational elements necessary to develop comprehensive poverty and vulnerability targeting mechanisms.

The guide argues that there is no ‘one size fits all’ targeting strategy, rather targeting mechanism should reflect the local context, including institutional framework, information availability, degree of inequality, governance factors, and the demographic profile, including presence of ethnic minorities.

The author outlines essential elements of a social fund targeting mechanism, these include:

• a poverty targeting strategy with a clear specification and justification of the vulnerable and poor target population 
• geographical targeting that specifies the methodology for selection of communities within targeted areas 
• an eligibility criteria menu that promotes self-selection and limits elite capture 
• inclusive processes at the community level where rules for community management committees are explicit 
• a monitoring and evaluation system that specifies targeting-related key performance indicators.