Actual Number of Direct Beneficiaries

The indicator measures the number of people who were actually supported by the project’s cash, voucher or in-kind assistance intended for meeting their basic needs (i.e. not the planned number of beneficiaries). This indicator shows the scale of the provided assistance. This indicator is mandatory for all projects providing cash / voucher / in-kind assistance.

Determine the indicator’s value by using the following methodology:

1) Review the following sources to identify the number of people (not households) who were supposed to be supported by the provided assistance:

- distribution lists (in the case of in-kind support, vouchers or payments in cash)

- financial reports / bank statements (in the case of bank transfers)

- documents providing evidence on the average number of people living in the supported households (if households, not individuals are the intended beneficiaries)

2) Verify the number of supported people from results of post-distribution surveys. Such surveys should tell you the percentage of intended beneficiaries who reported receiving the assistance shown by the documents listed above. If some people reported that they did not receive the assistance even though the project’s documents reported that they did receive it, you will have to investigate these instances. If this is confirmed, you should decrease the number of people who actually benefited accordingly.

3) The indicator’s value includes all the people who were supported by the project with any type of cash, voucher or in-kind support for meeting their basic needs (i.e. do not automatically use the originally planned number of direct beneficiaries – use the actual number of people that were supported). If support was provided to households, count the number of people living in the household (including young children and elderly), not the number of households.

Disaggregate the data by gender.

1) This indicator helps Tearfund and its partners understand how many people were reached by the cash / voucher or in-kind assistance provided by various projects (i.e. by any of the three modalities). In order to know how many people benefited from each of these modalities (e.g. from cash / from vouchers / from in-kind support), always use, in addition to this indicator, one or more of the following indicators:

- number of people directly supported through cash programming (see guidance)

- number of people directly supported through voucher programming (see guidance)

- number of people directly supported through in-kind programming (see guidance)

2) Ensure that you avoid double counting – always count the same people only once, irrespective of how many types of support they received.

3) Do not include in the calculation the number of indirect beneficiaries – focus only on those who directly received support as a result of the project activities.