Toward a New Approach to Product Development Partnership (PDP) Performance Measurement

Major corporations, philanthropic organizations, national governments, and international social sector organizations have joined forces to develop health products for neglected diseases. At the center of these multi-sector collaborations are innovative organizations, such as the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, Medicines for Malaria Ventures, and FIND Diagnostics- known collectively as product development partnerships (PDPs). All PDPs are developing products, but they are working on the very diverse challenges of vaccines, medicines or diagnostics, and while they are all relatively new organizations, they find themselves at different stages of organizational development. Although all PDPs measure their performance, there is much variation in what is measured and how performance indicators are expressed. The lack of a common framework makes it challenging for donors to evaluate PDPs while maintaining consistent quality, avoiding administrative burden, making it challenging to compare performance across PDPs. 

FSG Social Impact Advisors recently completed a comprehensive review of the state of performance measurement among PDPs and developed a working paper to establish a common approach to performance measurement among PDPs and donors. To complete the study, FSG conducted interviews with more than 60 organizations, including donors, PDPs, and a set of “analogous” organizations comprised of biotech firms, pharmaceutical companies, and nonprofits involved in global health. Some 600 individual metrics were collected and analyzed from PDPs and analogous organizations. Sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on behalf of a PDP Funders Group, the paper shows donors and PDPs the current state of performance measurement in the field and introduces a framework with a more comprehensive set of performance dimensions than donors currently take into consideration.

Download working paper »