Radically better procurement has the power to unlock more inclusive, prosperous, and sustainable communities. Our partners know this, and want our help: over the past six years, we have received hundreds of applications from over 70 countries to shift organizational culture and tackle goal-driven systemic procurement reform together.

Our Lift approach works. Over the 18 month-long Lift program, we work closely with each team to support procurement process, policy, and data improvements, while navigating change management. Out of the competitively selected 22 teams we’ve worked with, 14 have either achieved or are on track to achieve our high bar for systemic progress and impact.

Lift program outcomes range from doubling the size of Mexico City’s bike share program and making it more user-friendly at half the anticipated cost, and building technological capacity to lower the cost of essential medicines in Brazil, to bringing together procurement, socioeconomic, and climate data to support more flood-resilient infrastructure in Assam, India, to increasing small businesses’ participation – especially minority- and women-led businesses – around the world.

Our methods support change that not only sticks, but grows. For example, Mexico City’s bike share procurement was so successful that the Department of Transportation continues to replicate this approach in other high-profile procurements, such as for the city’s entire public transportation card payment system. Their work also resulted in formally adopting an innovative and cost-effective market consultation pre-bidding module, Prebases, which publishes draft specifications, award process details, and technical annexes so that suppliers and nonprofits can ask questions and make recommendations, which then receive public response from the government.

Ecuador has struggled with corruption, and a dysfunctional procurement system allowed some businesses to repeatedly win contracts despite poor delivery. Through Lift, we: brought together stakeholders from civil society and government to co-design their goal and plan; provided technical assistance to disclose and use procurement data to understand problems; gave financial and technical support to upskill civil society’s ability to analyze this data; and coached them through two major governmental transitions and secure a legislation making public access to contracting data a right.

Tangible results include that now 87% of the total annual procurement spending are disclosed in real-time through public dashboard and API, with more 13,000 users since its launch. This also led to a 17% increase in companies participating in procurement, as well as to 172 legal cases investigating questionable pandemic purchases, ensuring money dedicated to fighting a global crisis went to where it was needed most. This work is now expanding to public infrastructure and the inclusion of SMEs.

Lift has worked with teams at all levels of government and civil society. We’ve also seen that partnerships between government and civil society can be especially powerful. Past Lift teams have worked to achieve impact goals at the national level in Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Lithuania, Moldova, Paraguay, the Philippines, Senegal, Uganda, and the United Kingdom; the regional level in Assam, India, and Ekiti State, Nigeria; and metropolitan and city level in Bangkok, Buenos Aires, Argentina, Lille, France, Mexico City, Mexico, and in the United States’ cities of Boston, Massachusetts, Des Moines, Iowa, El Paso, Texas, and New Orleans, Louisiana, and Portland, Oregon.