NGOs and the effectiveness of interventions

Interventions led by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are often more effective than comparable efforts by other actors, yet relatively little is known about how implementer identity drives final outcomes. Combining a stratified field experiment in India with a triple-differences estimation strategy, we show that a local development NGO's prior engagement with target communities increases the effectiveness of a technology-promotion intervention implemented by it by at least 30 percent. This "NGO effect" has implications for the generalizability and scalability of evidence from experimental research conducted with local implementation partners.